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EUROPEAN UNION LEADERS have hailed a “breakthrough” in talks with Turkey on a deal to curb the migrant crisis but delayed a decision until a summit next week to flesh out the details of Ankara’s new demands.
Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu stunned his 28 EU counterparts in Brussels when he suddenly asked for an extra €3 billion in aid and visa-free travel for Turks to the bloc by June.
In return he proposed to take back all illegal migrants landing on the overstretched Greek islands, and suggested a one-for-one deal under which the EU would resettle one Syrian refugee from camps in Turkey in exchange for every Syrian that Turkey takes from Greece.
After EU leaders “warmly welcomed” Turkey’s proposals, EU president Donald Tusk said he would now work on the legal details to reach a final deal at a European summit in Brussels on March 17-18.
“We all of us are aware that in fact we have a breakthrough now,” he told a post-summit press conference.
Tusk, who toured Turkey, Greece and the Balkans in the run-up to the summit, said it was a major step in ending the continent’s biggest migration crisis since World War II.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel — who has been the strongest proponent of a deal with Turkey, partly to offset the impact of her own open-door asylum policy — gave cautious backing to the deal.
“It is a breakthrough if it becomes reality,” she told reporters.
‘Game-changer’
Muslim-majority Turkey is the main launching point for the more than one million migrants who have made the dangerous crossing over the Aegean Sea to the Greek islands since the start of 2015.
It hosts 2.7 million refugees from the five-year civil war in neighbouring Syria, more than any other country.
Ankara has nevertheless proved a difficult partner, failing to honour an earlier three-billion-euro deal with the EU in November and continually pushing Turkey’s long-stalled EU membership bid.
But Davutoglu surprised EU leaders yesterday by offering to take all irregular migrants from Greece, a step that would relieve the pressure on debt-hit Athens and the whole of the EU.
He said the one-for-one Syrian refugee swap deal was “game-changing” and denied that Turkey was “demanding” money, urging the world to share the burden of hosting Syrian refugees.
European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker also called the plan a “real game changer”, insisting that it was “legally feasible” despite questions from rights groups about whether it would breach international laws on the treatment of refugees.
EU sources said the bloc had already identified 70,000 places for Syrians resettled from Turkish camps.
For Turkey perhaps the biggest win was the EU’s agreement to push forward to June visa-free travel to the EU’s Schengen passport-free area for Turkey’s 75 million people, provided that Ankara honours its promises.
He further pushed for the opening of five more “chapters” in Turkey’s long-drawn out EU accession process — so far it has only completed one out of more than 30.
Divided Europe
But securing a deal next week may still be difficult given the deep divisions that the migration crisis has sown in the bloc.
Hungary’s hardline anti-migration Prime Minister Viktor Orban may veto the resettlement deal.
There is still bad blood in Ankara too, with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan — who has previously threatened to “flood” the EU with migrants — on Monday criticising the EU for a four-month delay in disbursing the funds from the November deal.
Meanwhile the EU chastised Turkey over its crackdown on the country’s biggest opposition newspaper, with Tusk warning that Ankara’s EU accession was dependent on freedom of the press.
While the EU has identified Turkey as the main pillar of its migration policy, the bloc still faces a host of other challenges.
Deep rifts emerged in recent weeks over the main migrant route through the Western Balkans to wealthy Germany, after border restrictions by Austria triggered a domino effect of frontier closures that left tens of thousands of migrants stranded at the border between Greece and non-EU Macedonia.
In its closing statement the EU leaders said that “irregular flows of migrants along the Western Balkans route have now come to an end”.
Next week the EU leaders must agree on a plan to restore the Schengen area to full functioning by the end of the year, after parts were effectively suspended by border closures.
They are also set to approve a €700 million aid plan for Greece, whose Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras has vowed that he will not let the rest of the EU turn his country into a “warehouse of souls”.
Single people have it tougher in society – if housebound that becomes worse. Good to see an article on this issue.
Oh please, give me a break. It was a bit of snow FFS!!!!
@Ciaran Fairley: You read that whole article in less than three minutes? Impressive.
Tell that the someone living alone who was recently bereaved.
@Glenn Caulfield: I seriously doubt that two days of snow was a significant additional stress factor in that case.
Snowflake seems an apt word these days
@Dara O’Brien: oh aye I’m sure you both know way better than the fully qualified pyschotherapist. Her point isn’t that snow can cause significant stress and loneliness, but magnify stress and loneliness that’s already there.
@Dara O’Brien: I myself suffer from depression and found a lot of the points in the article rang true. I personally could not leave the house for 4 days with poor conditions as i live rurally rather than the 2. Just because you have no empathy or understanding for those who suffer with their mental health doesnt give you the right to start attaching more labels to people. If youve nothing nice to say and all that
@Neal Ireland Hello.: It took you longer than three minutes to read that? Worrying.
@Anomander: hahaha exactly what I was thinking.
I loved the peace
@Ashling Fenton: I loved the peace too
The is a flip side for those of us for whom dealing with people is an absolute chore, time to actually relax without having to make an excuse, time when you can leave the mask off and save your energy without the relentless oppression of people telling you to cheer up because you’re not projecting a mindless obliviously happy persona and messing with their fragile superficial perceptions
@Brendan Gordon: Totally…I went out on Friday and people were out walking their dogs in the snow, there was little or no traffic on the roads as people weren’t hurrying to get to work or to school, people seemed happy to get away from the rat race for a few days.
@Fifty Shades of Sé: because people were walking around my estate instead of driving, I connected with neighbours I barely knew I had.i remember as a kid walking to the shops with my mam. She’d stop every few minutes to chat with neighbours, it used to drive me mad. I’m convinced that the car culture we have nowadays contributes to social isolation and lack of community spirit: now if you need a pint of milk you hop in the car to drive a couple of hundred meters down the road, go to the self service And you don’t even interact with shop staff. And yes , I do it myself.
@Dermot Lane: Very well put, economic and technological advancements over the past two decades have certainly lead to a seismic shift in culture towards communal interaction, the price of progress however can be the sacrifice of good values.
Times like this people turn to God…..as answer to the emptiness….
@John003: how does that work? If a few days of time dragging slowly and in terminal boredom is enough to induce depression, surely eternity would be a nightmare?
@John003: Really. Which one?
@John003: Peace be with you brother
It’s not all that bad it’s a bit of snow and you can’t get out for a few days hardly the end of the world now is.
I a biker 365 days of the year and i haven’t been able to get outside the gate yet but the world and all it’s madness will still be there waiting for me whenever I do manage to get out.
At this time 2 years ago we had the recent Dublin level of snow in the west. Being west of the M50 and west of Shannon, did not make the news so these issues were not talked about. It was, as the first comment reminds us, a bit of snow.
Very good article, isolation be it self imposed or circumstantial has long term detriment to mental health well being along with stress and anxiety. The past week more than most in recent times has highlighted the benefits of community interaction and human contact can counteract such problems, maybe when looking for solutions it’s time to get back to basics.
Very good comments. Very relatable.
It’s great if you’re an introvert though or so I hear :)
The doctor would have been well served if she added those navigating homelessness in family hubs, emergency accommodation, and on the streets; and those living in fear of losing their homes to VF, respossession, or extortionate rising rents to her list of those whose daily stresses are amplified by the isolation they bring…on a daily basis, along with the emptiness of endless time…. no matter what the weather.
People also need to learn to be alone with thier thoughts, to easy now distract yourself with social media if have 2 mins to spare, guilty of it myself.
Love to travel and part of reason is I’m unplugged and have time alone with my thoughts. That can actually be a joy rather than a problem if allow yourself engage with your inner self rather than seek external distraction.
Realise some have genuine isolation, and that needs addressing, but for some is self taught and can be Untaught
People belonging to big happy families where there’s a bit o’ land, a horse or two, a jeep and no one can even spell “rent,” wouldn’t know which end of the gas/electricity meter to put the coin in. Would that be the thing you use to measure the tyre depth? The same folk who laugh at mental illness and marginalised lives and think human trafficking is what the lollipop lady does.
Their frame of reference blinds them to the misery other people go through and, understandably, the same happens vice versa. Hence so much living in a parallel universe. It’s all bollocks really, all we can try and do is make the best of a bad job…
It says a lot about us as people if we can’t handle a few days indoors
Ooops when I said “from experience” I meant experience of loneliness DEFINITELY not prison. Lol
I think it was George Bernard Shaw who said “There is nothing worse than an endless holiday. I know from experience to quote tihe guy in Shawshank Redemptiin who says “the nights here are long….. time can stretch out like a razor blade” am not sure if it’s word for word but it sums loneliness up aptly.
I can only quote from Shawahank Redemption when the guy described his feelings of loneliness and isolation “prison time is slooooow time….in here time can draw out like a blade”
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