Samos closed controlled access centre (Zervou)
Zervou area, Municipality of Eastern Samos, 83100 Samos · Samos, North Aegean
The Samos closed controlled access centre is a state centre for people in the asylum procedure at Zervou, about 7 km from Vathy, the main town of Samos. It is run by the Reception and Identification Service (RIS) of the Ministry of Migration and Asylum and is in use. The National Situational Picture (NSP) of 1 September 2026 gives 3,664 places and counts 1,049 people for the centre as a whole. The ministry's page for the centre lists 960 of its 3,650 places in a pre-removal detention section run by the Hellenic Police, so we show 2,704 reception places and leave the detention section out. The subtraction is ours, and whether that section is in use is not published.
Key facts
- Type
- Closed controlled access centre (island)
- Run by
- Reception and Identification Service (RIS), Ministry of Migration and Asylum
- Address
- Zervou area, Municipality of Eastern Samos, 83100 Samos, Samos, North Aegean
- Capacity
- 2,704 places (as at 1 September 2026)Source: Our figure: NSP of 1 September 2026 (3,664 places) less the 960 pre-removal places in the ministry page's breakdown (3,650 places in all)
- People counted there
- 1,049 (as at 1 September 2026)Source: National Situational Picture (NSP) of 1 September 2026: a count for the whole centre, as the table has no separate line for a pre-removal section
- Status
- In use (as at 1 September 2026)
- Opened
- Inaugurated on 18 September 2021 (AIDA).
Background
The ministry describes the centre as fully EU-funded and gives its cost as about EUR 38 million excluding VAT; AIDA, citing the ministry, gives EUR 43 million. The ministry's page describes 3,650 places in all, 960 of them in a pre-removal detention section, and the NSP table lists no separate police facility for Samos, which is why we treat the NSP figure as including them. AIDA reports containers in poor repair and an unstable water supply. After a visit from 20 November to 1 December 2023, the Council of Europe's anti-torture committee (CPT) described the food distribution at the centre as "totally chaotic and undignified" (quoted in AIDA; report published on 12 July 2024).
Reported incidents
No reported incident is listed for this site. An incident is listed only if a mainstream, court, police or official source reports it, so an empty list does not mean that none occurred.
Sources
- National Situational Picture (NSP), Eastern Aegean islands, 1 September 2026 · official source
- Ministry of Migration and Asylum: page of the Samos centre (read on 4 October 2026) · official source
- AIDA / ECRE, Country Report Greece, 2025 Update (July 2026) · third-party source, not official
The Ministry of Migration and Asylum publishes a page for each reception structure with its name and address, but no coordinates, and its list is not kept up to date. For the five island centres the figures are those of the National Situational Picture (NSP) of 1 September 2026. For the mainland they are those of the ministry's reply to a parliamentary question of 6 February 2026 (figures at 31 December 2025), as published by Refugee Support Aegean, with the table of the AIDA country report (July 2026) for June 2025 beside them. Capacity is the figure each source gives, nominal unless the page says otherwise, and is not a headcount; where sources differ, each figure is shown with its date. For Samos and Leros the pre-removal detention places that the ministry's pages describe are subtracted from the NSP figure, and our Samos and Leros pages say so. Positions are placed by hand from map features and addresses and are approximate. No cost is published for any single site. Incidents are listed only where a mainstream, court, police or official source reports them, with the stage reached; an empty list does not mean that none occurred.