According to the Financial Times, the EU is close to a breakthrough deal with Ankara that would see all non-Syrian migrants reaching Greek islands returned to Turkey, marking a crucial step in the bloc’s hardening stance against the flow of people pouring into its territories.
After weeks of diplomatic pressure from Berlin and Brussels, Ahmet Davutoglu, privately signalled in negotiations on Thursday that Ankara will accept the systematic returns of non-Syrians and step up action against smugglers.
Although the agreement is tentative and its implementation would be hard, the terms could mark a long-sought turning point in Europe’s migration crisis, giving a harder edge to a strategy that has largely failed to dent flow of people across the Aegean Sea.
The flood of migrants has triggered acute tensions within the EU as more than 1.2m people reached the 28-country bloc by sea last year. German chancellor Angela Merkel has come under strong pressure at home and from other countries to stem the flow after she pledged to accept Syrian refugees last year and then sought an EU deal to share the burden with reluctant member states.
Sensitive issue
Two diplomats familiar with the discussion on Thursday said Turkey also agreed to accept all migrants rescued in international waters by a Nato mission, a sensitive issue that had held-up progress on the operation.
It came as Donald Tusk, the European Council president, bluntly warned that the doors of Europe were closing to those not fleeing persecution: “I want to appeal to all potential illegal economic migrants wherever you are from: do not come to Europe.”
To give weight to such a warning, Europe must kick-start its system of returning migrants with no prospects of securing refugee status. Roughly 2,000 people a day are reaching Greek islands, of which around half are Syrian. Overall, 1.2m migrants reached EU countries last year by sea.
Good progress on readmission
The sensitive three-way meeting in Ankara involved Davutoglu, Tusk and Frans Timmermans, the European Commission vice-president. Speaking afterwards, Tusk said he believed it would be possible to “announce good progress on readmission”.
“To many in Europe the most promising method is a fast and large-scale mechanism to ship back irregular migrants arriving in Greece,” he added. “It would break the business model of the smugglers.”
Earlier, Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte said that such an agreement was the “minimum outcome” from a Turkey-EU summit, scheduled for Monday. “The least I hope we can achieve is the acceleration of the return of third-country nationals and economic migrants,” said Rutte.
Echoing Berlin’s toughened stance, the Dutch prime minister also demanded that Turkey “considerably” reduce the flow of people before the EU signs up to a deal to move refugees directly from Turkey to the bloc. “We need to bring it back to the level from which we can see the zero,” Rutte told the Financial Times.
Sharp reduction in flows
Turkey has said it is unable to guarantee a sharp reduction in flows, and wants Europe to accept Syrian refugees directly from Turkey to deter migrants from risking a journey to Greece. Davutoglu on Thursday said it was “wrong to leave the migration crisis on the shoulders of Turkey and Greece alone”.
Any such large-scale resettlement offer is expected to be finalised bilaterally with Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, who is seeing Davutoglu on Sunday. Berlin has floated the idea of matching part of any reduction in irregular migration, a pledge that could run into hundreds of thousands, but negotiation with Ankara have been fraught. Some diplomats also expect Turkey to press for accelerated visa privileges for its citizens.
Tusk is set to meet Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s president and dominant political figure, on Friday. Mr Erdogan has taken a cool stance on the EU-Turkey migration negotiations, stoking suspicions in Brussels that he may be holding up a crackdown on smuggling.
Source: FT
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