They have also agreed to coordinate border controls to slow the influx of migrants crossing Turkey from Asia.
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He complained that Turkey has so far spent $8 billion on hosting the refugees – 2.2 million Syrians who fled the four-and-a-half year conflict in their country and also 300,000 Iraqis.
The latest United Nations refugee agency figures put the number of Syrians looking for asylum there at more than two million. Greece is a gateway to Europe for people from the Middle East and Africa.
Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European Commission, said Wednesday that Turkish business travelers should be given visa-free access to the EU as a first step.
“We need a response and an adequate response from the Turkish side; they are our partners in the crisis and the “more for more” principle applies”, he told reporters.
The development came after an Afghan refugee was shot dead on the border between Turkey and Bulgaria, forcing the Bulgarian Premier Boyko Borisov to fly home from the summit where the agreement with Turkey was announced.
Even if they make it that far, numerous EU’s internal borders remain locked down.
The European Union summit in Brussels stretched into the early hours of Thursday, and seems to have achieved a few results.
Mr Juncker said: “We have agreed with our Turkish partners that the visa liberalisation process will be accelerated”. The summit underscored the challenge facing Europe with the leaders attempting to woo Turkey, already harboring more than 2 million refugees, after cold-shouldering its requests to join the bloc for the past decade.
While Turkey wants EU to show good will addressing the free-visa travel, European leaders want proof that Turkey will live up to its pledges, as part of the deal would see Turkey increase its crack down on people-smugglers.
Diplomatic sources said that Mrs Merkel would be “crucial” in helping to stand up a deal that was agreed in outline in Brussels this week, but analysts warned still faces mounting political hurdles both inside Turkey and among a few European Union member states.
Turkey hosts more refugees than any other country in the world.
The chairman of this summit, Donald Tusk, said he was very clear that it all depends on whether the flow of refugees into Europe is actually stemmed – and I don’t think we are going to know for weeks whether Turkey has the ability to do that.
The European Union leaders called for strengthening the protection of the EU’s external borders, including the establishment of an integrated management system for external borders.
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French President Francois Hollande was keen to stress Turks would not be getting visas on easier terms than now.
