​EU-Turkey summit: A hard offer to swallow for EU

TURKEY - In Brief 08 Mar 2016 by Atilla Yesilada

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The historic EU-Turkey summit ended with a decision to hold another one on 17-18 March, as Turkish Premier Davutoglu arrived at Brussels with a ground-breaking proposal that can largely mitigate EU’s refugee crisis. The problem is EU needs to pay the piper and the price might be too high. On the positive side, by advancing a bold proposal Ankara batted the ball to EU’s court and made sure that it could not be blamed for any deterioration in relations. On the negative side, EU seems to have little interest in Turkey above and beyond the refugee issue. The proposal envisions Turkey accepting all refugees currently stuck in Greece and in the future, including those who are not from Syria. Turkey will also redouble efforts to crack down on human traffickers in an effort to substantially reduce the number of Aegean migrant crossings. In return, the Turkish government demands another Euro3 billion before the end of 2018, visa-free travel in Schengen zone by the end of June, the promise of orderly resettlement for Syrians who are true political refugees in Europe and the opening of five new accession chapters. This where the metaphor of paying the piper comes in. According to various press reports, · some EU members object to the request for additional financial aid, · Italy holds out for a criticism of human rights violations in Turkey in the final declaration, · Central European countries refuse to accept refugee quotas, · The Greek Cypriote and Greek Axis as well as France objects to opening of new chapters of accession. Finally, this just my hunch, but I don’t know if Davutoglu cleared this offer with Erdogan, who said during the summit that he expects the prime minister ...