The president of the European Council Donald Tusk will visit Athens within the week, ahead of the upcoming European summit with Turkey in Brussels, on the 7th of March.
Mr. Tusk will specifically visit Vienna, Ljubljana, Skopje and Athens between the 1st and 3rd March, in an effort to build a consensus over the refugee crisis. While in Athens, Mr. Tusk will likely be received by PM Alexis Tsirpas.
On Thursday and Friday the European Council president will visit Turkey, for talks with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and PM Ahmed Davutoglu.
EU president Donald Tusk said he would press Ankara for “a more intensive engagement” in the migrant crisis when he meets Turkey’s president and prime minister later this week.
“Not for a moment can we stop our efforts to improve the cooperation with our neighbors, starting with Turkey,” Tusk said in Vienna at the start of a multi-country tour laying the groundwork for a March 7 EU-Turkey summit on the crisis.
Substantial financial support
“Europe is ready, as it has already demonstrated, to grant substantial financial support to the countries neighboring the war-torn regions,” he told reporters after meeting Austrian Chancellor Werner Faymann.
“But at the same time we expect a more intensive engagement from our partners as an absolute precondition to avoid a humanitarian disaster. This will be the subject matter of my talks in Turkey this Thursday and Friday,” he added.
Tusk was due in Slovenia later on Tuesday before visiting Croatia and Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) on Wednesday.
The March 7 summit in Brussels will see Davutoglu and the leaders of the 28 EU states discuss the progress of last November’s EU-Turkey deal aimed at cutting the flow of migrants.
Under that deal, Turkey agreed to tackle people smugglers and improve conditions for Syrian refugees in exchange for three billion euros ($3.2 billion) and a promise from Brussels to speed up Ankaras EU membership bid.
The perilous journey
But alarm is growing in EU capitals as thousands of migrants are still reaching the Greek islands from Turkey after more than one million made the perilous journey last year.
Failure to make progress at the summit will spell “disaster” for the bloc, EU migration commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos said last week, with its passport-free Schengen zone at risk.
Relations with Turkey have been increasingly tense, with Erdogan even threatening to flood Europe with refugees if Ankara did not get more help during a November visit by Tusk and European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker.
Schengen border code
Speaking in Vienna, Tusk said EU members had to “fully apply” the Schengen border code and restore effective controls on the EUs external frontier in Greece.
“It’s not an easy decision but the truth is there is no alternative to (Schengen),” he said.
“We must face together the humanitarian consequences of our decision. The country which we must support in particular is Greece,” he said.
“A test of our European-ness will be, on the one hand, going back to Schengen, and on the other (having) a readiness to stand by Athens during these hard times.”
He said he was “opening a new chapter of our struggle with the migration crisis called ‘Back to Schengen’.”
Source: AFP
RELATED TOPICS: Greece, Greek tourism news, Tourism in Greece, Greek islands, Hotels in Greece, Travel to Greece, Greek destinations , Greek travel market, Greek tourism statistics, Greek tourism report
