Government spokesman Pavlos Marinakis presented a comparison of Greece's migration figures under the current government versus the 2015-2019 period under former Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, in a video posted to TikTok responding to Mr. Tsipras's recent speech and tour of Lesbos.
Citing official data, Mr. Marinakis said approximately 900,000 refugees and irregular migrants arrived in Greece in 2015, leaving islands in the northern Aegean in what he described as a state of "suffocation."
He said Greece "had lost all control over migration management" within four years under the Tsipras government.
According to the figures he cited, Lesbos's reception facilities, built to house 2,700 people, held approximately 19,000 migrants at the height of the crisis, while the total across the northern Aegean islands reached roughly 30,000.
By contrast, Mr. Marinakis said, Lesbos currently houses just 277 migrants.
He said total annual arrivals have fallen from approximately 890,000 in 2015 to 48,000 in 2025, a decrease of roughly 94%.
Pending asylum applications, he added, have dropped from 140,000 to 28,000, while processing times have fallen from as long as three years in 2019 to one to two months today.
On current policy, Mr. Marinakis said migrants who enter the country illegally now face two options: "return or detention."
He said comparing today's figures with the past is necessary to illustrate both the conditions the government inherited and the current state of migration management.
The exchange follows Mr. Tsipras's recent tour of Lesbos, where he addressed supporters as leader of the newly formed Greek Left Alliance (ELAS) party, continuing a broader political dispute between the government and opposition over Greece's handling of migration during the 2015 refugee crisis.