EC Promises Greek Refugee Reception Centers to Be Operational in Two Weeks

New Greek refugee reception centers for asylum seeker registration and relocation to the European Union, should be open within two weeks, European Commission spokeswoman Mina Andreeva said Wednesday.

MOSCOW (Sputnik) – According to Andreeva, numerous European officials have responded to the European Commission's calls to help deal with the refugee crisis.

"This should help, as Prime Minister [of Greece Alexis] Tsipras put it, to roll out hotspots in Greece which we expect will become operational within the next one to two weeks," Andreeva said at a press conference.

According to the spokeswoman, the first relocations, from Italy to Sweden, will take place on Friday.

Greece is one of a number of EU member states struggling with a massive inflow of refugees from conflict-torn countries in the Middle East and North Africa. Nearly 400,000 refugees and migrants have arrived in Greece by sea this year, according to International Organization for Migration (IOM) estimates.

in September, the bloc's interior ministers agreed to relocate some 120,000 asylum seekers, currently in Greece, Italy and Hungary, to other EU member countries under a mandatory quota system in an attempt to ease the burden on the union’s frontier states.