On Wednesday 15 March in Strasbourg, MEPs from the Greens/EFA, S&D, GUE/NGL and ALDE drew up a negative balance sheet for the EU/Turkey agreement intended to stop flows of migrants travelling to Greece. This balance sheet comes with the approaching first anniversary of this declaration signed between the member states and Turkey. Together with a representative from the Human Rights Watch (HWR) NGO, MEPs called on the EU to suspend this agreement and warned against member states being tempted to sideline Parliament from the evaluation of this kind of mechanism, which they are currently renewing with other countries based, on the previous agreement with Afghanistan last year. The latter agreement sought to facilitate the returns of Afghan nationals illegally residing in Europe.
The Greens/EFA copresident, Ska Keller (Germany), sees a number of problems with the agreement reached with Turkey on 18 March last year. Firstly, it is an agreement with the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, “who has abused this agreement to reduce the criticism he received from Europeans regarding attacks on human rights”. In second place, “Our responsibility (In terms of political asylum) has been delegated to a third country which is carrying out our policy on refugees instead of us”. Ska Keller also referred to the mechanism that seeks to ensure that an asylum seeker from Syria or another country and who has arrived in Greece after the agreement of 18 March, is sent back to Turkey if they are able to submit their request for protection there.
According to the figures regularly provided by the Commission, the system for returning asylum seekers to Turkey is not working and only people who are unable to claim asylum have so far been sent back to Turkey.
HWR believes this migration agreement with Turkey has created a lot of suffering, particularly in the Greek Islands, where 13,000 people have been retained “in suffering and despair”. The majority of them there are living in tents and are closed in, despite the fact that this is not included in the deal with Turkey, explained HRW representative, Philippe Dam. HWR believes that this agreement constitutes a genuine “erosion” in asylum standards.
Birgit Sippel (S&D, Germany) also highlighted the lack of solidarity from the member states to Greece at both logistical and financial levels. The German MEP also pointed out that the European Commission had not provided the assistance it had promised either.
The EPP Group was not represented on Wednesday because it believes, as asserted by Manfred Weber, that the agreement has so far been effective. The number of arrivals from Turkey to Greece has dramatically fallen since the entry into force of the agreement at the end of March 2016. (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)