Refugee situation in Turkish-Greek border under focus in Brussels

EU leaders warned President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Monday to respect the terms of a previous deal to keep migrants away from Europe’s borders, after the Turkish leader came to Brussels to demand more support, France 24 reports.

POLITICO reports that the Council President Charles Michel and Commission President Ursula von der Leyen met with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan for two hours on Monday evening in what they described as a crucial step in clearing up any such differences.

It was important on this occasion to exchange our views on different topics related to the relationship between Turkey and the European Union,” Michel said, adding: “We had the occasion to share our different opinions.”

Turkey hosts about 3.6 million refugees from Syria and has kept a lid on migration to Europe under a deal it agreed with the bloc in 2016 in return for billions of euros in aid. But it has become frustrated with what it regards as too little European support over the war in Syria, where its troops are facing off against Russian-backed government forces and have suffered growing casualties.

In fact POLITICO reports that what wasn’t entirely clear after their meeting in Brussels was how much more money — if any — the EU was prepared to pay on top of the roughly €6 billion allocated under the 2016 migration agreement to help Erdoğan’s government manage the nearly 4 million Syrians now living in Turkey. About €3 billion have been disbursed so far.

EU Council President Charles Michel said “we had also the occasion to discuss other topics related to the relationship between Turkey and the European Union and to try to exchange our views, our opinions in order to make progress and to have the occasion with this meeting in Brussels to consider that it’s a first step in order to have a stronger political dialogue in the short term, in the mid-term and in the longer term with Turkey.

Finally, we decided and it is very concrete and very important for the next days and for the next weeks, we decided to task Josep Borrell, the High Representative, with his counterpart in Turkey, the minister of foreign affairs, each of them with a team, to work in the next days in order to clarify the implementation of the deal between Turkey and the European Union.  This is to be certain that we are on the same page, that we have the same interpretation about what we do in Turkey at the level of the European Union in order to implement the deal.  We will keep the political dialogue with Erdoğan in the next days.”