However, Southern Cyprus is still blocking chapters of law that need to be opened to allow Turkey to join the EU.
Advertisement
The bloc’s 28 leaders will hold a summit in Brussels on Thursday, before a meeting the Turkish prime minister Ahmet Davutoğlu on Friday, to hammer out the final details of a plan aimed at stemming the flow of refugees and migrants coming to Europe.
Securing the EU-Turkey deal on resolving the refugee crisis depends on Ankara’s support for reunification talks in Cyprus, EU President Donald Tusk said Wednesday. European Union officials say about 18,000 places remain.
Under a proposed “one for one” scheme, for every Syrian refugee in Turkey who is resettled in Europe, a Syrian in Greece would be sent back across the Aegean.
He said the migration deal needed to be “an opportunity (for Turkey) to support the settlement talks in Cyrus”.
For each Syrian refugee who eludes efforts to stop illegal migration whom Turkey agrees to take back, Turkey will see a Syrian refugee resettled directly to Europe.
Tusk’s draft says the European Union would work with Turkey to “prepare for a decision” on opening new accession chapters “as soon as possible” – a hazy prospect Davutoglu may not appreciate.
“I think the opposition among member states is growing, and it’s going to be very hard to justify and craft a deal in such a short time frame”, says Mortera-Martinez, a research fellow at the London-based Centre for European Reform.
But objections were also raised by other member-states that reject the idea that they will have to accept quotas of refugees to unburden countries such as Greece that have borne the brunt of the crisis.
Analyst Mortera-Martinez also points to practical hurdles, including the difficulty of individually treating the cases of thousands of migrants stranded in Greece.
“It goes without saying. that we voice our convictions to Turkey regarding, for instance, the protection of press freedom or the treatment of the Kurds”, Merkel said.
European leaders scrambled Wednesday to salvage an under-fire draft deal with Turkey to ease the migrant crisis with a round of shuttle diplomacy on the eve of a crunch summit.
Commission vice president Frans Timmermans insisted Turkey would have to respect all the conditions to make visa liberalization a reality by June, a deadline many have called extremely tight.
The principles include the return of all new irregular migrants crossing from Turkey into Greek islands, quick implementation of a visa liberation roadmap for Turkish citizens, speedy disbursement of 3 billion euros (3.3 billion US dollars) in aid, and deciding on additional funding for refugee facilities for Syrians.
Kyritsis said right now there is space for up to 2,000 more people in shelters near Idomeni, while by the beginning of next week another 8,000 places will be available in the area.
Cyprus was divided in 1974 after Turkey invaded the north to prevent a coup inspired from Athens to unify the island with Greece.
Some 44,000 refugees and migrants, the last of the 143,000 who have entered Greece so far from Turkey in smugglers’ boats, are trapped in the country because of border closures on the Balkan route to Europe’s prosperous heartland. Greece agreed to ensure that migrants already on the Greek islands will be transferred to reception centres on the Greek mainland.
Advertisement
Refugees’ desperation again became clear this week when some 1,500 made a dash across a river on the Greek-Macedonian border, only to be sent back to the muddy camps and tent cities on the Greek side.
