Some European Union lawmakers Monday blasted the European Commission for remaining silent on Greece’s illegal policy of pushing back asylum-seekers on its borders.

Reactions were directed to Margaritis Schinas, vice president of the European Commission, and the bloc's Home Affairs Commissioner Ylva Johansson, during a meeting of the European Parliament's committee on civil liberties, justice and home affairs.

Commenting on footage brought to light by The New York Times on May 19, which documented the pushback of migrants by Greek forces, lawmakers said the case would likely be covered up by Greece.

The incident in question took place on April 11, according to the publication.

The damning video, recorded by a human rights activist on the island of Lesbos, revealed the continued and systematic pushbacks Athens has been denying for long years.

It showed 12 migrants, including children and a 6-month-old infant, being driven in a white van to a "small cove spot with a wooden dock at the southern tip" of the island where they are taken out to the Aegean waters on a speedboat.

They were later transferred to a Greek coast guard vessel before being abandoned on a floating boat in the middle of the Aegean Sea and set adrift until they were picked up by the Turkish Coast Guard Command.

The New York Times said it had tracked down the migrants at the Izmir detention facility where they recounted their ordeal.

Greece's Migration Ministry declined to comment when contacted by Agence France-Presse (AFP).

German deputy Birgit Sippel said it was not the first time migrants were pushed back by Greece, and that the practice should not be encouraged.

Dutch member of parliament Sophie in 't Veld said the footage, which sparked calls by the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights for an independent probe, is "clear" and "leaves no room for further investigation."

The NYT expose blew up days before a general election was held in Greece where conservative Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis came out victorious just shy of an outright majority.

A tough stance against immigration is a key plank of Mitsotakis's election platform. Earlier in the campaign, the prime minister traveled to the land border with Türkiye where he vowed to extend a 5-metre-high (16.40-foot-high) steel fence to contain the inward migration flow.

Following backlash over the video, he said his administration was investigating the pushback "claim" and assured he was taking the incident "very seriously."

Greece has long been under fire for its illegal, often inhumane and sometimes deadly practice of pushbacks – summary deportations of migrants without allowing them to apply for asylum.

The Greek government denies all allegations, despite claims to the contrary from alleged victims, rights groups, Turkish drones and even the U.N.’s special rapporteur on the human rights of migrants.

"In Greece, pushbacks at land and sea borders have become the de facto general policy," the U.N.’s special rapporteur on the human rights of migrants, Felipe Gonzalez Morales, said last year.

Similarly, many in the international community, including Türkiye, which attracts illegal migrants worldwide for being a key gateway to Europe, have frequently condemned the practice as a violation of humanitarian values and international law for endangering the lives of vulnerable migrants.

Greece has also been accused of deliberately and systematically cooperating with the EU's border agency Frontex for the pushbacks, according to a 2022 investigation by the European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF).

While the Turkish coast guard has come to the rescue of thousands sent back by Greek authorities, countless others died at sea as boats full of refugees sank or capsized, especially in the Aegean Sea where both countries share a border.

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) recorded nearly 2,000 migrants dead or missing in the Mediterranean Sea last year.

A report by Türkiye’s Ombudsman Institution said in July 2022 that Greece had pushed back about 42,000 migrants since 2020.

Between Jan. 1 and Dec. 16, 2022, the Turkish Coast Guard Command’s Aegean Command Station saved 47,498 irregular migrants in 1,550 separate cases across its areas of jurisdiction, over 18,000 of whom were victims of Greece’s pushback policy.

In early 2023 alone, Greek coast guards pushed back hundreds of migrants trying to cross the Aegean, causing at least nine deaths in two shipwrecks near Türkiye’s western shores in March.

Athens consistently denies the accusations despite abundant migrant testimonies, media evidence and international scrutiny. Mitsotakis since coming into office in 2019 has vowed to make his country "less attractive" to asylum-seekers.

The migrant crisis in the Aegean and the broader Mediterranean remains unsolved as on the other side of the issue is the persistence of migrant smugglers.

Greek authorities too have been tightening their crackdown on suspects, including police officers, linked with human smuggling networks that bring migrants mainly from Syria, Afghanistan and Pakistan.