EU leaders agreed to an ambitious refugee deal with Turkey on Friday as human rights groups questioned the legality of a programme that will see thousands of migrants sent back to Turkey from Greece.
Under the agreement, all migrants arriving in Greece after midnight on Sunday will be sent back to Turkey following individual asylum assessments. In turn, the EU will resettle a maximum of 72,000 Syrians directly from Turkey between now and May. Those who are already residing in Turkey will qualify first for the resettlement plan; those shipped back to Turkey will most likely be housed in Turkey while they await relocation.
“All new irregular migrants crossing from Turkey in to Greek islands from March 20th, 2016, will be returned to Turkey,” the joint EU-Turkey statement said. “This will take place in full accordance with EU and international law, thus excluding any kind of collective expulsion.”
Hypocrisy
While earlier Turkish president Tayyip Erdogan accused the EU of hypocrisy over the migration crisis, Turkish prime minister Ahmet Davutoglu welcomed the agreement, hailing the summit as “a historic day”.
“We today realised that Turkey and the EU have the same destiny, the same challenges, and the same future,” he said after the summit.
Among the main elements of the deal is a commitment to lift visa restrictions on Turkish citizens by June if Turkey fulfils 72 commitments. A new chapter in Turkey’s accession negotiations with the EU will also be opened, though no progress was made on five other chapters being blocked by Cyprus.
With EU and Greek officials racing to implement a plan which comes into effect at midnight on March 20th, the European Commission announced the appointment of a special team to support Greece. The country is struggling to cope with more than 40,000 migrants. It is estimated 4,000 staff from various EU bodies and individual member states will need to be dispatched to Greece, with countries, including Ireland, already committing to provide personnel.
Legal obstacles
Reacting to the agreement, the UN’s refugee agency, the UNHCR said that “how this plan is to be implemented is . . . going to be crucial”, though it welcomed the commitment to ensure compatibility with international and European law.
But speaking at the end of the summit, German chancellor Angela Merkel warned that “legal obstacles” remained.
“I have no illusions that further setbacks will still go with what we’ve decided today. There are enormous logistical challenges that we have to tackle. But I believe that we’ve come to an accord that entails an element of irreversibility.”
Amnesty International and Médecins sans Frontières were among the organisations who criticised the deal, while Oxfam accused the EU of “trading human beings for political concessions”.
Speaking after the summit Taoiseach Enda Kenny said the Turkish prime minister had made it clear that “not one euro” of the extra €3 billion committed by the EU would go to Turkey. “It will go exclusively to monitoring systems for the benefits of those who are migrants to Turkey and asylum seekers,” he said.
