Source: BBC

Even as people struggle and drown on the river border between Greece and Macedonia the proposed solution to Europe’s migration crisis is dissolving before our very eyes.

European Council President Donald Tusk’s invitation letter to the two-day summit in Brussels this week admits gloomily “the catalogue of issues to be resolved before we can conclude an agreement is long”.

Turkey is the key, and Turkey is the lock. The youthful, populous, problematic Muslim country is a practical conundrum and an existential threat to the EU’s self-definition, seen by some as the classic shadow image, the threat of the other.

Before I get carried away, it was obvious from the start that the deal was flawed, forced and bound to be opposed with vehemence.

Left and right, ancient and modern, north and south are joined in rebellion against Mrs Merkel and the planned EU deal with Turkey.

It is not so much snagged on a nail, fraying at the edges, as already unravelled before the summit, little more than a pile of wool lying on the floor. To pick up the threads and knit it into anything serviceable will be a painstaking labour of necessity.

Perhaps it has already done its job.

The EU does not thrive on surprises, and this deal came as a brutal shock. That in politics can be a masterstroke. But to be so it has to delight, rather than dismay, those who are taken unawares.

It was a cobbled-together plan that would reward Turkey for taking back every migrant who arrived on Greek shores from their country.

Image copyrightReuters

In return for each such desperate soul, another – apparently more deserving – would be taken from Turkey and sent to a willing European Union country.

Angela Merkel and her consigliere Donald Tusk strongarmed a deal ahead of German elections in which migration was a major issue.

While the elections were not exactly a triumph for the chancellor, they were also not quite the rout some of her opponents claim.

At least it looked for a short while that she had a road map out of crisis.

But only hours after the deal was done the UN declared that the policy could be illegal.

Spain will now champion this view at this week’s summit, with the acting foreign minister declaring to El Pais: “Anyone arriving on European territory must have the right to individualised attention, to filing an asylum request that will be taken into consideration, and to appeal if the request is denied. Throughout this process, any possibility of expulsion is suspended.”

It is hard to see how an organisation almost painfully conscious of its responsibility to international law can have extricated this particular spanner from this piece of work.

What is in the EU-Turkey proposal?

The EU leaders said “bold moves” were needed, and made the following proposals:

• All new irregular migrants crossing from Turkey to Greece will be returned to Turkey. Irregular migrants means all those outside normal transit procedures, ie without documentation
• In exchange for every returned Syrian, one Syrian from Turkey will be resettled in the EU
• Plans to ease access to the EU for Turkish citizens will be speeded up, with a view to allowing visa-free travel by June
• EU payments of €3bn ($3.3bn; £2.2bn) promised in October will be speeded up, with the possibility of further aid to help Turkey deal with the crisis. Turkey reportedly asked for the sum to be doubled
• Preparations will be made for opening new chapters in talks on EU membership for Turkey

But liberal worries about legality are not the half of it.

The exhortation that the passport-free area should be re-established, even as new barbed wire fences were going up between Slovakia and Croatia, always seemed unrealistic.

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