Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said on Friday he was cautiously optimistic that Turkey would agree at a European Union summit on Monday to take back non-Syrian refugees as part of a “step-by-step” approach to confronting Europe’s migration crisis. The expectation is that the pressure on Greece’s external border will reduce if there is a clear message that the unregulated flow of migrants from 2015 will not continue into 2016. He added that sending migrants back from Europe would break the business model of smugglers arranging sea crossings for asylum seekers.
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Tusk was careful to single out illegal economic migrants for possible deportation, not asylum seekers. A much smaller number are economic migrants, fleeing poverty and economic instability in their home countries.
With discussion on Monday also expected to focus on the Schengen free-travel area, the European Commission yesterday gave EU member states an end-of-year deadline to phase out border checks introduced in the wake of the refugee crisis.
On the Greek border with the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, tensions are escalating as migrants and refugees find themselves locked in a worsening human bottleneck. Dwellers at a sprawling camp there hold out hope for crossing in increasingly hard conditions.
Greek police said 130 people were allowed to cross the border Thursday.
“They say here (in Greece) everything is OK, but on the other side this is not acceptable”, a frustrated Abdallah told The Associated Press.
“We are sticking to plans for a permanent distribution mechanism for refugees”.
He also had a direct message for them.
As the human tide shows no sign of abating, the European Union has issued an extraordinary plea to would be migrants: Don’t risk your lives and money. It is all for nothing.
But Greece and Balkan nations are not the only country struggling to respond to the huge influx of people. Later Thursday, he was to visit Turkey, from where the vast majority of the roughly 1 million migrants who entered Greece over the past 14 months crossed over in smuggling boats.
Mr Tusk wants Turkey to accept migrants turned away by Europe. The EU is also to provide Greece with more money to handle the arriving migrants and relocate them to other EU countries faster. “Do not believe the smugglers. It is all for nothing”, Tusk said.
“We ask that unilateral actions stop in Europe”, Alexis Tsipras, the Greek prime minister, said in comments with Tusk, who supports that view. The Balkan countries and Austria have recently introduced tight restrictions to stem the flow of migrants. Protests have been frequent, and this week Macedonian police used tear gas and stun grenades to repel hundreds of Syrians and Iraqis who had torn down a border gate.
The plan calls for the end of temporary border controls and the restoration by the end of 2016 of full free travel across the 26-country Schengen zone.
In its report, the Commission estimated the direct cost of fully imposing border controls inside the Schengen zone at 5 to 18 billion euros a year, with additional administrative and second-wave costs on top of that.
“That has nothing to do with protection of external borders”. Brexit would not automatically lead to a change in the border agreement between the two countries.
“We need to see the flows from Turkey drastically down soon”, EU Migration Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos told a news conference as he unveiled the bloc’s new “roadmap” for Schengen.
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While Greece can protect its land borders, it can’t do the same for some 10,000 kilometres (6,000 miles) of coastline, he said.
