Turkey EU migrant deal

3/20/2016 5:09:25 AM

(MENAFN- The Peninsula) The deal will stanch the flow of migrants into Europe but fails to protect their rights.

The European Union and Turkey have finally sealed a deal to stanch the flow of migrants into Europe. The leaders of 28 nations in the bloc and Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu of Turkey approved the accord after two days of strenuous negotiations. The agreement seeks to return new asylum seekers who arrive in Greece from Turkey and its main terms include disbursement of $6.6bn in aid to Ankara to help organisations look after the nearly three million migrants already in Turkey promises of visa-free travel for Turkish citizens in most of Europe and the eventual restart of talks with Turkey on membership in the European Union. EU president Donald Tusk said that all ‘irregular’ migrants would be returned to Turkey from Sunday and for every Syrian refugee expelled the EU would resettle one directly from Turkey.

Turkey has been able to extract a string of political and financial concessions in return for taking for taking steps to stop the exodus of migrants to Europe. That the EU has agreed to these conditions points to the intense pressure the bloc has been facing and the internal upheavals in many member countries against the migrants. German Chancellor Angela has already been punished for her pro-immigrant bias during the elections in three states where her party lost heavily while leaders of some other European countries have been hurling abuse at the immigrants.

At the same time as Europe battles to resolve its worst migration crisis since World War II the deal has come under fire from rights groups. It’s heartening that hundreds of thousands in Europe are sympathising with the plight of migrants and thousands of people took to the streets of European capitals -- in London Athens Barcelona Vienna Amsterdam and several Swiss cities -- yesterday expressing support for migrants. In London approximately 4000 people joined a protest carrying placards with slogans like “Refugees welcome here” and “Stand up to racism”. Amnesty International has called the deal a “historic blow to human rights.” As Amnesty has pointed out it was signed to protect the interests of the two signatories while the rights of asylum seekers have been ignored.

The migrants issue will continue to divide Europe with parties and leaders speaking in divergent tones. A consensus is extremely difficult with the anti-immigrant camps often gaining precedence over the pro-camps. We will have to wait to see how the agreement is implemented and its impact on asylum seekers. The European Union needs to educate migrants about the dangers and futility of their journey to Europe and the middlemen must be stopped and punished so that lives are not put to risk.

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