European leaders are to push Turkey at a summit today to agree to “large-scale” deportations of economic migrants from Greece, as European Council President Donald Tusk says he sees the first hints of a resolution to the migrant crisis.
With a fresh surge expected in the warmer spring weather, the EU’s 28 leaders are pinning much of their hopes for reducing the chaos on new commitments from Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu.
The EU is also to push Ankara to drastically reduce the huge flow of migrants into Europe, as Turkey is the launchpad for most of the more than 1 million refugees and migrants who have arrived in Europe since early last year.
Photo: EPA
On Saturday, European Migration Commissioner Dimitris Avramapoulos said Greece — already struggling with a buildup of 30,000 migrants — was expected to receive “another 100,000” migrants by the end of this month.
Tusk, the summit host, said in his invitation letter that success depended largely on securing Turkey’s agreement at the summit for the “large-scale” readmission from Greece of economic migrants who do not qualify as refugees.
“It would effectively break the business model of the smugglers,” Tusk said when he also raised the idea on Thursday in Ankara with Davutoglu.
“For the first time since the beginning of the migration crisis, I can see a European consensus emerging,” Tusk said in his letter.
Following their lunch with Davutoglu in Brussels, EU leaders are to meet by themselves.
The EU said Turkey has made progress toward implementing a cooperation-for-aid deal clinched in November last year, but added that too many people were still heading from Turkey to Greece, the main entry point to Europe.
The European Commission, the EU executive body, said in a report that the daily average of irregular arrivals last month was 1,943, which is “high” for a winter month.
In the report to EU summit participants, the commission said that Ankara on Feb. 26 approved 859 readmission requests from Greece, which it described as encouraging.
Prime Minister Mark Rutte of the Netherlands, which holds the bloc’s rotating presidency, told reporters he hoped Turkey would agree “to accelerate readmission of third-country nationals and economic migrants.”
“I think that would be the minimum outcome,” Rutte added.
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