Leaders of the EU and Turkey have gathered in Brussels to work out ways of curbing the mass influx of refugees into Europe. The summit is being overshadowed by the Turkish government’s recent raid on a major newspaper.
07 March 2016
The UN’s refugee chief, Filippo Grandi, criticized the action plan discussed during the EU-Turkey summit, saying he was “very concerned” with the solution debated by the European leaders and Turkey. He also called on EU countries to share Turkey’s burden by accepting Syrian refugees.
“In the joint action plan, the most important thing is to help Turkey bear the burden, responsibility by taking people ... not in the thousands or tens of thousands but in the hundreds of thousands,” the UN High Commissioner for Refugees said during an event at the Geneva Graduate Institute.
The President of the European Parliament Martin Schulz called on the Turkish state to restart the peace process with the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), in a statement to reporters in Brussels.
Turkey has requested additional € 3 billion ($3.31bn) to add to the original 3 billion the European Union had already promised to help it tackle the refugee crisis, Martin Schulz, the President of the European Parliament , said during a press briefing in Brussels.
NATO has sent ships into Greek and Turkish territorial waters to counter human traffickers smuggling refugees and migrants into Europe and overcome territorial sensitivities between Greece and Turkey, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg told a news conference in Brussels.
“NATO is starting activities in territorial waters today. We are expanding our cooperation with the EU’s border agency Frontex and we are expanding the number of ships in our deployment,” he said, adding that France and the UK had agreed to send their navy ships to aid the NATO mission in the Aegean.
"With these new proposals we aim to rescue refugees, discourage those who misuse and exploit their situation and find a new era in Turkey-EU relations," Davutoglu said at a NATO news conference in Brussels.
The UK prime minister, facing a battle to keep his country in the EU, says that none of what is being discussed will affect Britain, which has set its own refugee quotas, and remains outside the Schengen visa-free zone.
RT's Peter Oliver with the latest briefing from Brussels.
The traditional "family photo" with all the leaders. Jean-Claude Juncker on his best behavior today.
As predicted, the bargaining has begun, with EU putting forward a counter offer of an additional €3 billion for Turkey in the next three years, on top of the previously mentioned €3 billion. The figures are contained in a draft document, which was shown to Reuters.
More protocol shots from the summit.
According to diplomatic sources, one of Davutoglu's demands is visa-free travel inside the Schengen for Turkish citizens, starting from June this year. Currently, this measure is up for a review in October, with no guarantee that it will be approved.
Turkey is dramatically raising the stakes, with diplomatic sources saying that Ankara is now demanding €20 billion in EU funding, but will offer to take back all non-Syrian refugees from Europe in return.
“It’s going to be a proper Turkish bazaar - first we will throw our hands up in the air expressing shock about Turkey’s demands," the insider from the EU side of the table told the agency.
“Then we’ll offer to meet a tiny, tiny, tiny part of what they want. And then we’ll see how the bargaining goes from there.”
More inside info about Turkey's proposals from diplomats inside the negotiating room.
Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said that he is ready to propose a fundamentally overhauled plan for overcoming the refugee crisis that is overwhelming both the EU and Turkey.
"We are presenting a new idea today to seriously tackle and solve this problem. This proposal involves several new elements," he told the media, without elaborating.
The summit is now expected to last well into the evening, with any statement expected after dinner.
EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini has urged Ankara to desist from its intensifying conflict with its Kurdish minority.
"The European Union recognizes that the PKK is a terrorist organisation but there is the need to reengage, from the Turkish authorities’ side, with the Kurdish political representatives - the ones that express their positions in a peaceful way - inside the institutions, to give a perspective to the Kurdish issue inside the country,” she told the media outside the conference hall.
Latest photos from the summit, courtesy of Turkey's EU relations minister.
Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu and Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, the leaders of the two countries through which most of the refugees have to go through to make it into the rest of Europe, held a separate bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the summit.
Turkish President Tayyip Recep Erdogan says he is relying on Europe to finally hand over the much-touted €3 billion to help the country handle the refugee influx from Syria and Iraq, following the Brussels summit.
"We already spent $10 billion for 3 million people. They promised to give us €3 billion, four months have passed since then. The prime minister is in Brussels right now. I hope he returns with that money, the €3 billion," Erdogan said on national television.
Arriving at the EU-Turkey refugee crisis summit, French President Francois Hollande, commenting on the seizure of the Zaman daily, said: "Cooperating with Turkey doesn't mean we should not be extremely vigilant about press freedom. And I am!"
Turkey will do everything possible to tackle illegal migration in the Aegean Sea, but will not be able to eliminate the crossings completely, a spokesman for Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said.
"Everybody knows what the Aegean looks like and it is not possible for any country to stop all migrants. But that doesn't mean we won't do everything we can," the spokesman told Reuters on the sidelines of the EU-Turkey summit in Brussels.
The spokesman said a meeting between Davutoglu, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte and German Chancellor Angela Merkel on the eve of the summit was "very fruitful," but did not elaborate.
Kurdish protesters have used the meeting as an opportunity to vent their feelings about what they regard as a campaign of persecution against them inside the country.
Chancellor Merkel and Prime Minister Davutoglu discussed media freedoms on Sunday, following the police raid on the offices of the Zaman newspaper in Istanbul, deputy government spokeswoman Christiane Wirtz said.
"You can assume that this topic was on the agenda during the most recent talks between the chancellor and the Turkish prime minister," she told a government news conference.
"Press freedom has very great significance to the German government," she added.
Relations between Brussels and Ankara "are important and difficult," president of the European Parliament Martin Schulz said on arrival at the summit. He also said he had told PM Davutoglu that the freedom of press issue was important for the EU.
He wrote on Twitter as well that civil liberties in Turkey were equally important, and the recent seizure of the Zaman newspaper was “yet another blow to press freedom.”