Implementation of EU-Turkey agreement on migrants

The agreement between the EU and Turkey on returning the illegal migrants arriving in Europe has started being implemented.

România Internațional, 05.04.2016, 13:42

The controversial deal between the European Union and Turkey with respect to returning the illegal migrants arriving in Europe has started being implemented. As early as Monday morning, three Turkish vessels took over from the islands of Lesbos and Chios 202 illegal immigrants who had arrived in Greece after March 20 and had not sought asylum. Apart from several Syrians, most of those migrants come from Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan.

Well planned and widely covered by the media, the operation was supervised by the Greek police and experts with the European agency for external border management, Frontex. Once in Turkey, the Syrians were taken to a refugee camp in Osmaniye, in the south, while the others were brought to Kirklareli, near the Bulgarian border in the north of Turkey, from where they will be gradually sent to their home countries. Meanwhile, under the agreement between the EU and Turkey, 43 Syrian refugees who were in Turkey have reached Germany and Finland.

This is the first operation under the accord signed by Brussels and Ankara on March 18. Concluded after intensive negotiations, the agreement aims to reduce the large number of people that cross the Aegean from Turkey to Greece, seeking to obtain asylum in the European Union. Over one million people, including many Syrians fleeing the war that is tearing their country apart, managed to get to Greece in 2015.

The recent EU-Turkey agreement provides for the return to Turkey of all the illegal immigrants who reached Greece after March 20. That does not involve the Syrians, who are subject to a separate section of the agreement, under which for each Syrian sent back to Turkey, another one is admitted into the EU, up to a 72,000 ceiling. Human rights organisations have sharply criticized the agreement. Amnesty International has voiced concern about the fate of the thousands of people who are in Greece waiting for a decision on their asylum applications. The German NGO Pro Asyl has denounced what they see as an illegal, inhuman act, while the NGO Oxfam says the treatment of those refugees comes against the spirit of international law and the moral authority that Europe once had.

Meanwhile, some 50,000 refugees and migrants who arrived in Greece prior to March 20 are still stuck in that country after the Balkan route was closed down. All of them have been identified and registered, and the next step is either for them to be expelled, if they are found to be economic migrants, or to be relocated in an EU member country. A rough 63,000 people will be distributed among EU member states, Romania included, within the next two years. So far only 581 refugees have been relocated. Fifteen of a total of 6,000 people Romania has undertaken to receive have reached this country.