German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Thursday 29 August in Berlin, alongside Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, that she would seek to improve the March 2016 EU/Turkey agreement or ‘declaration’ (see EUROPE 11515/1) to help Turkey meet its commitments and strengthen its assistance to refugees, several media reports said. An agreement whose authorship had at the time been attributed to the Chancellor.
The Chancellor had discussions with the Turkish President on this subject, with the Chancellor suggesting that the EU could take further steps to better implement this declaration. This is in a context of increasing arrivals of migrants on the island of Lesbos, with 500 people arriving from Turkey on 29 August alone.
All the people were taken to Moria camp on the already overcrowded island of Lesbos, where some 10,000 migrants are waiting for a solution. The venue has a capacity of 3,000 places.
The 2016 agreement between the EU and Turkey provides that the EU systematically sends back migrants who arrive illegally on its territory from Turkey and that in exchange, Turkey stops any departure to the EU. In practice, however, returns to Turkey have remained limited, in particular because of the asylum procedures lodged on the spot and examined in advance by the Greek authorities. Under the 2016 agreement, Member States are also providing Turkey with money to manage refugees in situ and offer resettlement places in the EU. According to a table from March 2019, only 2,224 persons had been returned from Greece to Turkey since March 2016 and 20,262 persons resettled from Turkey had been returned to the EU. (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)