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.
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During a visit to Berlin Tuesday Ban said: “Extreme right-wing and nationalistic political parties are inflaming the situation where we need to be seeking solutions, harmonious solutions based on shared responsibilities”. “That’s what he said publicly and those are the discussions he had with Merkel”.
Things could be progressing faster “but overall all things are moving in the right direction”, Merkel told German radio station SWR.
North Atlantic Treaty Organisation began patrols in the Aegean on Monday to support efforts to locate migrant boats, overcoming territorial sensitivities in Greece and Turkey to patrol in the waters of both North Atlantic Treaty Organisation states.
It would also speed up the payment of 3 billion euros ($3.3 billion) to Turkey to help it deal with the refugee crisis, with potentially billions more on the table.
NR: For me, the real question is “how are they going to enforce this?”
EU President Donald Tusk on Thursday issued a stark warning to economic migrants not to come to Europe, as he castigated countries for taking unilateral action to tackle the crisis.
Proposals to send back refugees en masse from the European Union to Turkey would contravene their right to protection under European and worldwide law, agencies and rights groups say.
Rights group Amnesty International said European Union and Turkish leaders had “sunk to a new low” and ridiculed the notion that Turkey was a “safe country” to which migrants could return.
Turkey is the main launching point for the more than one million migrants and refugees who have made the unsafe crossing to Europe since the start of 2015.
Citing specific paragraphs in the EU’s asylum procedure directive, he said countries could refuse to consider refugee claims if there was a safe place to send them back to. He did not specify the required documents.
“With our European partners, we agreed that it is necessary to do everything to end illegal migration flows through the Western Balkans route”.
She noted that the situation in “most hardly-hit” Greece was unsustainable, and that more work was needed with Greek leadership to protect the EU’s external borders. They were to be sent back to Greece.
Hungary’s hardline anti-migration Prime Minister Viktor Orban may veto the resettlement deal.
“It is as if Erdogan wanted to teach a lesson to European leaders”, Zaman’s Brussels bureau chief Selcuk Gultasli wrote in an opinion piece for the EUobserver, describing what happened days before the Turkey-EU summit in four months as “a slap in the face of European values”.
The Cyprus problem has been a thorn in Turkey’s bid for membership of the European bloc ever since it was submitted in 1987.
“An agreement that would be tantamount to a blanket return of any foreigners to a third country, is not consistent with European law, is not consistent with global law”.
Amid concerns in Europe about illegal migration into the continent, Cochetel said he was “tired of hearing about irregular migrants” because 91 percent of those arriving in Greece are from war-torn countries like Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan. It is home to 2.7 million refugees from the war in Syria, more than any other country.
The gate in the razor-wire-clad border fence stayed closed, but some 14,000 people here continued a routine of queuing for food, collecting firewood and tidying their tents, as children helped out, slept, or played in the waterlogged fields.
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“There is a large number of children and young women and pregnant women that require attention”, said Yiannis Baskozos, general secretary of Health Ministry.
