Photo:Xinhua/VNA

European Union countries on Tuesday began sending migrants who arrived over the last 5 months via Greece back to Greece to have their asylum applications assessed. EU rules oblige migrants to apply for asylum in the country they first entered. That requirement was put on hold when hundreds of thousands of people, many of them Syrian refugees, reached Greece in 2015. The European Commission recommended last December that member countries gradually resume sending unauthorized migrants who arrived after March 15 back to Greece, which often was the first point of entry to the 28-nation EU. European Commission spokesperson Tove Ernst underlined that Greece's services for migrants, since last year, has improved to the point that the commission felt comfortable making a non-binding recommendation for transfers to resume.