EU and Turkey Agree a Plan to Slow Down the Refugee Wave

The latest from the migrant crisis, as the EU makes a deal with Turkey.

Turkey will stop the uncontrolled flow of refugees to the EU, and the EU will pay Turkey at least 3 billion euros, immediately restart membership negotiations and abolish visa requirements for Turks travelling to the EU by October 2016. These are some of the decision contained in a joint declaration adopted at the end of the summit of 28 prime ministers and presidents of the EU member states with Turkey’s Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, reports Vecernji List and Index.hr on November 30, 2015.

Although the European Commission presented a proposal according to which Croatia should pay Turkey 7.38 million euros, Croatian Prime Minister Zoran Milanović came to the summit with an attitude that he could not assume any financial liability on behalf of Croatia, since he is currently just a caretaker prime minister and must not make any such decisions. “We will all have to give something, but I cannot say exactly how much”, Milanović explained. “But, at this point, considering that we are a caretaker government, I have to see how much I can even talk about it”, Milanović added.

On the sidelines of the summit, Milanović spoke with Slovenian Prime Minister Miro Cerar about protest notes sent by Croatia to Slovenia due to the construction of the border fence on the part of Croatian territory. “They are trying to make some small gains”, Milanović said and added that the fence will be removed eventually.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel at the end of the summit confirmed that there was no discussion on how much money each country would give to Turkey to reach the total amount of 3 billion euros. “It is clear that there will be additional contributions, but we have not talked about this in detail”, Merkel said. One source claimed ahead of the meeting that the EU did not want to discuss internal financial arrangements in front of Turkish delegation.

Several different sources from the EU say that there is fear that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan took advantage of the weakness of the EU, and that the EU has given him too much, while it is not certain that Turkey will fulfil its promise to stop the flow of refugees. “As far as I am concerned, the EU has not made any particular concessions to Turkey. But, there are those who think that it has”, Milanović said at the end of the summit.

In return, the EU wants Turkey not only to stop the influx of refugees and migrants to Greece and the EU, but also to accept their readmission, which is the return of those migrants who cannot receive asylum in the EU. So far, Turkey has not accepted the readmission of third-country nationals. “We must not be naive. Turkey is not the only key to solving the migrant crisis”, President of the European Council Donald Tusk said. “The most important key is our responsibility and duty to protect our external borders. We cannot ‘outsource’ that task to any third country. I repeat: without control of our external borders, Schengen will become history”, Tusk concluded.

 

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