by Syed Qamar Rizvi.
Turkish and EU leaders on Friday agreed a “historic” deal for curbing the influx of migrants that has plunged Europe into its biggest refugee crisis since the end of World War II.
Turkey extracted a string of political and financial concessions in exchange for becoming a bulwark against the flow of desperate humanity heading to Europe from Syria and elsewhere.
“It is a historic day because we reached a very important agreement between Turkey and the EU,” Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said after the deal was struck at a summit in Brussels.
The dividends for EU & Turkey
After two days of negotiations, Turkey and the European Union reached a compromise agreement on a plan to reduce the flow of migrants from the Middle East to Europe. At a summit concluding March 18, the heads of government of the 28 EU members and their Turkish counterparts approved the plan, which should take effect March 20. While the deal could help reduce the number of migrants arriving in Europe, questions remain about the signatories’ ability and commitment to fully enforce it. The EU is also set to increase the €3 billion ($3.3 billion) it had already committed to help Turkey cope with millions of refugees.
In return, Turkey plans to take back migrants who arrive in Greece from Turkish shores, including Syrian refugees. For the latter, the deal would operate under a one-for-one principle, whereby EU countries would take Syrian refugees from camps in Turkey for every Syrian refugee Turkey takes back from Greece. The idea is to ensure there is only a legal, organized channel for Syrian migration to the bloc.
Previously, Turkish authorities were committed only to taking back asylum seekers whose claim was rejected by the EU after June 1 this year.
Turkey came into Monday’s EU summit demanding a doubling of EU assistance to €6 billion ($6.6 billion) and faster timetables for EU membership and visa-free access to the bloc than were in a previous migration deal reached in November.
With the March 18 agreement, Ankara agreed that all migrants arriving in Greece from Turkey will be sent back to Turkey. And for every Syrian migrant sent back to Turkey, a Syrian in Turkey will be given asylum in the European Union. The plan, however, caps the number of Syrians who can be sent to Europe from Turkey at 72,000. If that limit is reached, the European Union and Turkey would have to renegotiate.
The issue of Turkey’s EU bid
The agreement makes partial concessions to Turkey. In exchange for accepting returned migrants, Turkey wanted to open five chapters of its accession negotiation with the European Union. (In EU accession talks, chapters represent aspects of an applicant country’s policy that must be evaluated in comparison with EU standards before it can join the bloc.) The Cypriot government countered with demands for a stronger Turkish commitment to reunifying Cyprus, which was divided into distinct Greek and Turkish states after Turkey invaded in 1974. As a result of the talks, EU leaders compromised, agreeing to open only one mostly technical and not particularly controversial chapter.
The growing hopes
If implemented properly, the new plan could discourage migrants from trying to reach Greece. The idea is to punish people who try to reach Greece illegally by sending them back to Turkey, relegating them to the bottom of the list of asylum applicants. At the same time, people who wait in Turkey and use official channels to pursue asylum will be rewarded for their patience. But for the deal to work, Turkey will have to better prevent migrants from reaching Greece, and Greece will have to become more efficient at processing asylum applications.
So far, efforts to regulate the flow of migrants have been disappointing. On March 17, German media reported that German officials working on the recently approved NATO patrolling operation in the Aegean Sea are frustrated by its limited effect; human trafficking organizations are still managing to avoid controls and reach the Greek islands.
What the European reformists think
European Conservatives and Reformists group home affairs spokesman Timothy Kirkhope MEP has written to all 28 EU leaders and the Presidents of the European Council and Commission urging a rethink of the agreement.
He said:
“This agreement must not be rushed into in desperation. EU leaders need to think long and hard about the widespread implications it will have. European Prime Ministers must not become so anxious to be seen to do something that they end up doing the completely wrong thing.
“We seem to be breaking a number of our own rules and conventions, we are risking continued unsustainable levels of economic migration into the EU, we risk shifting pressures to other routes, and we are giving away six billion euros with no way of ensuring it will be used effectively. This is not a workable agreement.
“Turkey must be a major partner in stemming the flow of economic migrants, but it cannot do our job for us. An ambitious UNHCR-led resettlement scheme can be delivered alongside a strong readmission agreement with Turkey, then the resources we are handing away could be spent in Europe on detention, processing and returns. We need to get the basics right and stop trying to find a solitary solution that does not exist.”
The concept of emergency brake
An emergency brake built in to any deal with Turkey and activated if certain conditions are breached, or identified following an assessment by the European Commission. Such breaches would include:
1: An unmanageable number of persons having to be resettled within the EU. 2: Human rights violations by Turkey of those being returned. 3: Any misuse of the funds given by the EU.
It is my strong belief that EU leaders would be far better creating an ambitious UNHCR led resettlement scheme from Turkey and from conflict regions. This can be delivered by strengthening and expanding the existing EU Turkey readmission agreement, and using the funds being offered to Turkey to stabilise the EU’s external border, increase the capacity of EU agencies operating in hotpots and the external border, to speed up the process of asylum procedures, combat human trafficking, and provide dignified and adequate living conditions for those already in the EU.
To ensure the support of the European Parliament, the European Council must show that it respects the laws and international conventions in place, as new legislation is likely to require agreement of the co-legislators. We must not fight illegal immigration through illegal means ourselves.
Challenges ahead
As NATO and Turkey tightened patrols, and hundreds trying to make the journey were intercepted on Saturday, the fate of thousands already stranded in Greece remains unclear.
Conditions are increasingly desperate at the vast Idomeni tent camp on the closed Macedonian border. Aid agencies believe the situation is set to go from bad to worse.
“From the International Rescue Committee’s perspective, the deal is only going to lead to more disorder, more lack of dignity,” said IRC spokesperson Lucy Carrigan in Idomeni.
“The idea that you can base resettlement on conditions that people are returned from Greece to Turkey is unethical.”
Ironically, Turkey’s liberals, who have been the strongest supporters of Turkish EU membership for decades, are not thrilled with the new rapprochement between Ankara and Brussels. The lingering question on their minds is whether the deal will come at the cost of what little Turkish democracy remains. Turkey’s EU candidacy has long served as an engine of constitutional reform and democratic transition. To fulfil the Copenhagen criteria, Turkey undertook constitutional amendments to reform the judiciary, curb the military’s power in politics and strengthen fundamental rights and freedoms.
The deal & international law
The refugee crisis has left Europe increasingly divided, with fears that its Schengen passport-free zone could collapse as states reintroduce border controls and concerns over the rise of populist parties on anti-immigration sentiment.
European leaders voiced caution about whether they can finally seal the deal with Turkey, which has been trying to join the EU for decades.
Tusk said earlier he was “cautiously optimistic but frankly, more cautious than optimistic” while German Chancellor Angela Merkel warned there were “many things to resolve”.
Other EU leaders voiced worries that the deal – under which the EU would take in one Syrian refugee from Turkish soil in exchange for every Syrian taken back by Turkey from Greece – would be illegal.
The aim of the “one-for-one” deal is allegedly to encourage Syrians to apply for asylum in the EU while they are still on Turkish soil, instead of taking dangerous smugglers’ boats across the Aegean Sea.
Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite said the plan was “very complicated, will be very difficult to implement and is on the edge of international law”.
Despite the fact that all 28 EU member states have agreed to the terms of the final deal set out by Tusk, the experts on international law see this agreement with warranted suspicion. And there is also a growing concern in the European civil society that this agreement may cause a great harm to EU’s image as a soft power. But to predetermine any viable scope regarding this utilitarian agreement between Brussels and Ankara, yet remains a prophetic task.
