The EU lashed out at Macedonian police for tear-gassing desperate refugees who tried to force their way across the border with Greece on Monday, saying it was “not our idea of managing the crisis”.
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In another message Tusk wrote: “The EU will not leave Greece alone”.
The European Commission’s proposal will, if approved, switch 300 million euros ($325 million) this year from its 155-billion euro annual budget to the new Emergency Assistance scheme and 200 million next year and in 2018.
The commission assumes that Greece will be able to secure its maritime border with Turkey with the help of the Frontex EU border agency and cooperation with coastguards from across the EU which will together form an independent European Border and Coast Guard by autumn.
The EU president – who has said the numbers arriving from Turkey are “far too high” – was to push Erdogan for more intensive help in handling the crisis, after bluntly warning economic migrants to stay away from Europe.
The move has created a rapidly growing bottleneck of migrants in Greece, a country facing its own severe financial hardships, as the flow of people there from Turkey continues unabated.
The 26-country Schengen area – allowing passport-free travel from Iceland to Greece – is under threat as eight countries have reintroduced border controls to stem the flow of migrants through the bloc.
Some 100 mostly Iraqis and Syrians, almost half of them children, remain stranded on the Serbian side of the border with Croatia which is refusing to take them in for various administrative reasons.
He said illegal economic migrants were risking “lives and money” for nothing.
“Reports by Amnesty International and local groups speak of arbitrary arrests of refugees and of ill-treatment in detention in Turkey, plus denial of legal representation or aid, making it impossible for them to challenge their detention and deportation”, the group adds.
Also Tuesday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said European countries needed to reinstate the Schengen system of border-free travel within Europe to deal with the crisis rather than implement extra border controls.
In bleak scenes, refugees have been forced to queue for hours for meagre food rations at the mud-soaked, overpacked Idomeni camp on the border.
Cavusolglu said Greece had submitted 860 requests for Turkey to take people back, “99 percent” of which had been accepted.
The UN special representative for worldwide migration, Peter Sutherland, warns the number of people stranded in Greece could pass 70,000 as people arrive, then get blocked.
Tusk has been meeting with heads of states throughout Europe before hosting next week another emergency European Union summit on the refugee crisis.
“We already have readmission agreements with Greece, Bulgaria and other countries and we are preparing to sign others”.
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Russia’s involvement in the Syrian civil war, which Breedlove said had bolstered Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his allies, has changed the dynamic and “complicated the problem…in the air and on the ground”.
