Source: BBC
European Union negotiators and Turkey have agreed a draft deal over the migrant crisis, which must now be approved by the 28 EU leaders.
Under the scheme, migrants arriving in Greece after midnight Sunday will be sent back to Turkey if their asylum claim is rejected.
In return, EU countries will resettle thousands of migrants from Turkey.
Both the Czech and Finnish leaders have indicated they and their counterparts will accept the deal.
For Turkey, the deal will also bring financial aid and faster EU membership talks.
But at the start of the talks Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, stressed he wanted to keep a “humanitarian perspective” on the crisis.
“The Turkey deal was approved,” Finland’s prime minister Juha Sipila wrote on Twitter, although this is yet to be confirmed by the other 27 members.
Ahead of Friday’s talks, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said that Turkey had to meet international standards of protection for all migrants.
She added that the EU needed to be ready to start returning migrants from Greece to Turkey rapidly to avoid a “pull factor” creating a surge of migrants before the new system takes effect.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Europe should look at its own record on migrants before it told Turkey what to do.
In an uncompromising speech broadcast on television, he said: “At a time when Turkey is hosting three million (migrants), those who are unable to find space for a handful of refugees, who in the middle of Europe keep these innocents in shameful conditions, must first look at themselves.”
Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite warned on Thursday that the plan to return people to Turkey was “on the edge of international law” and difficult to implement.
But arriving at the summit on Friday she said an agreement was possible because “it is important and necessary for both sides”.
Categories: Europe, European Union, migrants, The Muslim Times, Turkey