Athens Legal Clinic

Greece remains a primary entry point to Europe for people seeking asylum. Upon arrival, they’re confronted with a complex, harsh and often inaccessible asylum system. Despite this, there’s very little legal assistance available.

Our legal clinic exists to help bridge this gap.

We provide expert legal support and advice to people navigating this system. Our experienced legal team provides:

• One-to-one legal advice and information for asylum seekers and refugees in Greece. This includes representation in asylum applications and interview preparation, accompaniment to asylum interviews and submission of detailed legal memos to support applications. Our team also provides assistance with appeals and further legal legal measures for people we've represented at interview and who are refused asylum.
• Urgent interview preparation: in cases where we do not have time or capacity for full representation, we help people to prepare for their registration, admissibility, substantive and subsequent application interviews. 
• Family reunification applications within the EU, including through the Dublin III Regulation.
• Group legal information sessions delivered in multiple languages to help people understand their rights and the asylum process.
• Targeted outreach, including work in collaboration with community actors to reach people in need of legal information and support.

“I was so grateful. I’d never had someone fight for us the way she did. I’ve had lawyers before, but they can’t compare. It’s a miracle for me, she gave me hope.”

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We also carry out wider work to strengthen refugee protection in Greece:

• Signposting individuals outside of Greece to appropriate organisations in their country of residence (we do not provide legal advice to people seeking to travel to Greece).
  
  
• Training and capacity-building for other NGOs and grassroots organisations working in refugee protection.
  
  
• Multilingual legal information materials to help people better understand their rights and the asylum process.
  
  
• Advocacy, including contributions to research, policy reports and joint initiatives, grounded in insights from our frontline legal work.
  
  
• Networks and collaboration to share accurate information with legal networks, journalists, researchers and others working on asylum and migration.

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