The Turkish President, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, arrived in Brussels on Monday 9 March for a meeting with European leaders Ursula von der Leyen and Charles Michel to review the EU/Turkey Declaration from 18 March 2016 after the recent crisis at the Greco-Turkish border which caused thousands of people to flock to the EU.
For the President of the European Council, Charles Michel, this meeting was intended to remind the Turkish President that it is “important for us to implement this agreement”, he said at the start of the meeting. “There is a willingness to have an open and direct dialogue with Ankara to see how this agreement can be implemented on both sides”.
But the three leaders are also expected to discuss the regional situation and the crisis in Syria and “see how we can bring more stability to the region”, the President of the Council added.
For his part, the Turkish President said he expected “concrete support from our NATO allies” in a statement alongside NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, whom he had met earlier in the day.
Stressing that his country is home to 3.7 million refugees, Mr Erdogan took the opportunity to criticise Greece and will not “allow” the “country to use the situation and Turkey to manipulate the EU and gain gains for itself”, he said.
10 days after Ankara ‘broke’ the Pact, Monday evening was therefore about discussing the continuation of this cooperation launched in 2016, which is based on an action of the Turkish government against illegal immigration from Turkey to Greece in exchange for money to take care of refugees on Turkish soil.
The financial modalities for making this agreement last, currently amounting to €6 billion through the end of 2020, were also to be discussed on Monday evening, as Mrs von der Leyen herself indicated at her first 100-day conference (see other news).
The President also defended the March 2016 agreement reached in the wake of the migration crisis that emerged in Greece and Italy in 2015. For Mrs von der Leyen, the principles of this cooperation are “good”.
“It is generally a good agreement, because there is a shared responsibility”, she replied to journalists. On the one hand, “illegal immigration is not tolerated, but [there are] humanitarian corridors for Syrians from Turkey to the EU”, she justified, stressing that the “resettlement of refugees” part to the EU had worked better than the “return” part of the agreement.
According to Commission data from October 2019, Greece has carried out 1,908 returns of Syrian asylum seekers to Turkey since March 2016, and since 2016 the EU has resettled 25,000 persons from Turkey (in 18 Member States).
But this “agreement was intended to be of limited duration, so a broader framework needs to be discussed”, the President continued. However, this discussion with President Erdogan will not be concluded “in one evening, further discussions will be needed in the coming days and weeks”, she added, but the priority for the moment is to “do everything possible to ensure a return to calm” after the “rate” at which the flow of migrants to the EU proved to be after the announcement of the opening of European borders.
Five Member States willing to relieve Greece of its ‘unaccompanied minors’
The President of the Commission also confirmed that, at this stage, five Member States had volunteered to receive unaccompanied minor migrants currently present on the Greek islands.
Out of 5,000 minors registered in the Aegean islands, France, Germany, Luxembourg, Portugal and Finland have agreed to take between 1,000 and 1,500, according to AFP, a figure which Mrs von der Leyen did not want to confirm.
German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer had called for a coalition of willing countries to relieve Athens and care for unaccompanied minors at the meeting of interior ministers on 4 March (see EUROPE 12439/1). The President then held talks with the Greek Prime Minister, Kyriákos Mitsotákis, and in turn announced the aid on Friday 6 March (see EUROPE 12441/2). (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)