Tag Archives: EU

Uncertainty in Turkey as migrant returns set to start under EU deal

Syrian Refugees

By Tulay Karadeniz and Dasha Afanasieva

ANKARA (Reuters) – Five days before Turkey is due to start taking back illegal migrants from Greece under a landmark deal with the European Union, uncertainty remains over how many will come, how they will be processed, and where they will be housed.

Turkey agreed with the EU this month to take back all migrants and refugees who cross illegally to Greece in exchange for financial aid, faster visa-free travel for Turks and slightly accelerated EU membership talks.

The returns are supposed to begin on April 4 under the plan, which aims to close the main route by which a million migrants and refugees poured across the Aegean Sea to Greece in the last year before heading north mainly to Germany and Sweden.

Rights groups and some European politicians have challenged the legality and feasibility of the deal, questioning whether Turkey has sufficient safeguards in place to defend refugees’ rights and whether it can be considered a safe country for them.

The first returnees are expected to be taken by boat from the Greek islands to Dikili, north of the city of Izmir on Turkey’s Aegean coast, Turkish officials said. But where they will be housed in the longer term remains unclear.

“Our worries are that not just Dikili but the whole region’s infrastructure is not ready if they stay here – whether it’s health or education facilities. We have expressed these worries,” Dikili’s mayor, Mustafa Tosun, told Reuters by telephone.

“We can’t get information from the authorities … we only hear rumors,” he said, adding that the area was a tourist destination ill-suited to sheltering migrants in the long-term.

District governor Mustafa Nazmi Sezgin was quoted by the Haberturk newspaper as saying the plan was not to set up a refugee camp but just a registration center, from where migrants would be sent on to Izmir or other areas within 24 hours.

Kerem Kinik, vice president of the Turkish Red Crescent, said his organization was preparing a camp with 5,000 places in the province of Manisa east of Izmir after being asked for help by the government, although it would not be ready immediately.

“We will host the first returnees most probably in hotels, seaside holiday camps,” he told Reuters. Some might then be housed in refugee camps, but others were likely to return to the Turkish provinces where they had previously settled, he said.

Syrians would be free to settle outside camps if they wanted, according to an official from Turkey’s disaster management agency AFAD, which has taken a lead role in managing the 2.9 million Syrian refugees already in Turkey.

“We can’t lock them down in accommodation centers. If they want, they can go to camps, or if they have relatives they might stay with them. But if they say ‘I can take care of myself’ … we can’t pressure them,” the official said.

DEAL RUSHED THROUGH

Turkey has spent almost $10 billion since the start of the Syrian conflict, much of it on refugees camps close to the Syrian border whose standards have won international praise. A new law gives migrants permission to work in Turkey, although there are limitations on where and in which sectors.

But the camps house fewer than 300,000 of Turkey’s migrant population, who mostly fend for themselves, many through working illegally. Critics of the EU-Turkey deal fear some of the returnees from Greece will end up forced to take jobs on the black market or beg on the streets.

Under the pact, Ankara will take back all migrants and refugees who cross to Greece illegally by sea. In return, the EU will resettle thousands of legal Syrian refugees directly from Turkey – one for each Syrian returned from the Greek islands.

EU leaders hope the agreement will deter migrants from turning to people smugglers to make the dangerous crossing in small boats. However, arrivals on the Greek islands rose sharply on Wednesday after a week-long lull that was most likely due to bad weather rather than the deal.

The first European resettlement of 40 Syrians to Germany is planned for next week, a diplomatic source said, declining to be named because the plan has not yet been finalised.

Turkey intends to send non-Syrians who do not meet asylum criteria back to their countries of origin, under readmission agreements which Ankara already has with some states and is negotiating with 14 others – including Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Eritrea and Somalia – according to foreign ministry officials.

That has raised concern among rights groups, who worry the deal has been rushed through by European and Turkish leaders without sufficient thought about its implementation.

“Every individual should have access to individualized procedures with the chance to explain if they don’t want to return to Turkey… Being able to achieve all this in such a short period of time seems unrealistic,” said Irem Ars, regional migration researcher for Europe for Amnesty International.

“We don’t consider Turkey a safe country for refugees and asylum seekers. We have documented cases of forced returns to Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan,” she told Reuters.

Amnesty accused Turkey last week of forcibly returning about 30 Afghan asylum-seekers to Afghanistan despite their fearing Taliban attacks.

The Turkish Directorate General of Migration Management acknowledged the return of 27 Afghans, but insisted all were returned voluntarily and that none had requested asylum.

(Additional reporting by Karolina Tagaris in Athens; Writing by Nick Tattersall; editing by David Stamp)

EU launches emergency refugee aid scheme for Greece

By Gabriela Baczynska and Francesco Guarascio

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – The European Union, faced with a burgeoning refugee crisis in Greece, launched a new aid program on Wednesday worth an initial 700 million euros that mirrors the kind of disaster relief it offers developing nations.

As European states have tightened borders following the arrival of more than a million migrants by sea last year and the Athens government has appealed for help to house and care for tens of thousands still arriving and now stranded in Greece.

The European Commission’s proposal will, if approved, switch 300 million euros ($325 million) this year from its 155-billion euro annual budget to the new emergency assistance scheme and 200 million euros both next year and in 2018.

Officials stress that the program will not divert funds from the EU’s 1.1-billion annual budget devoted to helping the world’s poorest. They note that relieving the suffering of refugees closer to their homes is a key part of the 28-nation bloc’s strategy to discourage people from making dangerous journeys to Europe.

More than 400 people have died or gone missing in the Mediterranean this year as they tried to reach Europe, most of them on the short but perilous crossing from Turkey to Greece.

Turkey is at the heart of the EU’s efforts to slow the influx of refugees and migrants and the bloc wants Ankara to ensure that daily arrivals fall below 1,000 from 2,000-3,000 at present.

Two officials told Reuters that Germany, the principal destination for those arriving in Europe, is looking for flows to be “in the realm of three digits, not four” per day and, should that happen, Berlin would start taking refugees directly from Turkey for resettlement – an attempt to promote legal migration rather than continuing the chaotic influx of 2015.

The Commission also said on Wednesday that 308 irregular migrants who had no case for asylum in Europe were being returned to Turkey from Greece, a sharp increase on recent numbers going back to Turkey.

The EU money, to be spent in conjunction with the United Nations and private charities working in Greece and other EU states, is intended to fund purchases of shelter, food, medical aid and other basic services.

Greece, which now houses about 25,000 refugees and migrants, has hitherto benefited from EU funding and assistance under other programs to bolster its border and security systems and coordinate donations of aid from fellow EU members, though Athens has complained that offers have been inadequate.

“The number of refugees continues to rise, so do their humanitarian needs. All of this is happening inside Europe,” Humanitarian Aid Commissioner Christos Stylianides said.

At a single border point, the Idomeni crossing between Greece and Macedonia, between 12,000 and 15,000 stranded people were in need of urgent humanitarian assistance, he said.

“OVERWHELMED”

Officials in Brussels said the aim is to have the scheme operational on the ground “within weeks rather than months”.

The new program, to be a permanent feature of the EU budget, is intended for use by any EU state that is “overwhelmed” and cannot cope with a wide range of emergencies, including accidents, militant attacks and epidemics. It will need approval by the European Parliament and member states.

Greece, the main gateway to Europe, would initially be the main beneficiary of the emergency scheme for “tackling wide-ranging humanitarian crises within the EU”. The money would also be available to other EU countries along the Balkans migration route — the main track used by refugees and migrants.

Greece, its economy blighted by the euro zone debt crisis, has asked for 480 million euros to help it cope with 100,000 migrants. EU officials said on Wednesday they were still looking at the request.

More than a million people reached Europe last year and some 133,000 arrived on the continent so far in 2016 in what has grown to be a major crisis for the bloc, that now also risks turning into a humanitarian disaster.

(Additional reporting by Alastair Macdonald and Robin Emmott; Editing by Dominic Evans)

Euro zone, IMF split over how much Greece needs to reform

By Jan Strupczewski

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Euro zone lenders and the International Monetary Fund disagree over how much more Greece needs to do to reform its economy, a dispute that may delay new payouts and the start of debt relief talks, officials said.

Greece has been kept afloat since 2010 by IMF and euro zone bailouts. The lenders have disagreed in the past, but they have managed to resolve their issues before they got much publicity.

But after Athens had to ask for a third bailout last year, some in the IMF wanted to stay out of yet another program unless they were sure it would get Greece back on its feet.

“The main problem now is disagreement between the institutions, because that will harm the credibility of any solution,” one senior official said. “They must get their act together and agree on a scenario and on policy measures.”

IMF and euro zone officials hope to reach a compromise on Greece in talks this week, before a meeting of euro zone finance ministers on Monday. Senior officials from both sides are to meet for dinner on Wednesday in Brussels to discuss the issue.

Until the euro zone and the IMF agree, they cannot decide if Greece has met the first requirements for the payout of new loans. Nor can the euro zone start discussions with Athens on debt relief that would help make Greece’s huge debt sustainable.

Greece has no major debt redemptions due until July, giving the lenders and Athens time to find a compromise. But the drawn- out talks undermine investor confidence.

“If we now enter a cycle of whether this review will be concluded or not, it will generate the kind of insecurity we more or less had last year … with the loss of confidence and capital flight,” a third official close to the lenders said.

The dispute focuses on what Greece has to do to reach a 3.5 percent primary surplus in 2018 and keep it there so that it no longer has to borrow from the euro zone to remain solvent.

Officials said the IMF had a more cautious outlook than euro zone institutions on Greek economic growth and fiscal performance, as experience showed Athens underperformed targets.

The IMF believes Greece’s primary surplus in 2018 will be around 2 percent with the current reforms. Growth will be about a percentage point lower than forecast by the euro zone. Greece should therefore be more ambitious with reforms, especially with the most politically difficult, pension reform.

REFORMS NOT ENOUGH

Yet Greece’s commitments are spelled out in a memorandum of understanding (MoU) it signed with the euro zone in August. It says the pension reform will deliver savings of 1 percent of gross domestic product in 2016.

The draft reform prepared by Athens does that, but Greece also understood the deal from August a bit differently.

“In summer we promised to do 1 pct GDP of extra measures to be legislated in 2016 but to be implemented in 2017 and 2018. The IMF is asking for even more measures than this, which is very difficult for us to understand,” Greek Finance Minister Euclid Tsakalotos told a hearing in the European Parliament.

“We feel that we have already compromised. I don’t think we have to make a greater compromise … because we are at the end of a recession and … we have already had 11 cuts,” he said.

The IMF was involved in talks on the memorandum, but did not sign off on it and is not formally part of the bailout. It says the numbers don’t add up.

“To reach its ambitious medium-term target for the primary surplus of 3.5 percent of GDP, Greece will need to take measures in the order of some 4-5 percent of GDP,” the IMF’s head of the European department, Poul Thomsen, wrote on Feb 11. “We cannot see how Greece can do so without major savings on pensions.”

The pension reform could be less ambitious and the 2018 primary surplus lower if the euro zone offered Greece greater debt relief, Thomsen said.

That would irk some in the euro zone who have to maintain similar surpluses to keep debt sustainable or who, like the Baltics or Slovakia, find it difficult to justify Greeks getting bigger pensions than their own citizens.

“We should do what we promised in the summer, and the IMF should pressure the EU to make that sustainable (with more debt relief),” Tsakalotos told European parliamentarians.

Another snag is that the IMF wants debt relief to solve the issue once and for all. The euro zone wants a staggered scheme, linked to conditions over time.

While the IMF is not formally part of the third bailout, the euro zone would very much like it to be. But the Fund will not join unless their views align.

The approval of the IMF is also a must for northern European countries like Germany, Austria or Finland, which believe the European Commission is too lenient towards Greece and too optimistic with forecasts.

(Reporting By Jan Strupczewski, additional reporting by Paul Taylor and Francesco Guarascio in Brussels, Gernot Heller in Berlin, editing by Larry King)

Greece Must Implement Terms of EU Bailout Quickly

Newly re-elected, left wing Prime Minister of Greece, Alexis Tsipras announced that Greece must “quickly implement” the terms of the EU bailout agreed upon in July. During  his first Cabinet meeting, Tsipras stressed that his aim is to have steered the country out of its crisis by 2019 when his four-year mandate ends.

“We are aware of the difficult points of the deal… we know how to find the right antidote where there are side effects,” Tsipras said today. “This mandate is translated into one word; work.”

A review by the lenders will be conducted in late October to determine if the reform program has been implemented.   

Tsipras highlighted another crisis for his country, saying that  the government’s task was made into an even greater challenge by Europe’s migrant flows.

Greece has become the main point of entry into Europe for those fleeing war and poverty in the Syria and war torn Africa, most of whom then head by land to richer EU countries further north.

UN: EU Must Accept 200,000 Migrants

The United Nations has told member nations of the European Union (EU) that they must accept 200,000 migrants in a “common strategy” rather than their current “piecemeal” approach.

The head of the UN’s refugee agency said that the EU is reaching a “defining moment.”

Antonio Guterres said that the EU leadership must demand “mandatory participation” of any country in the EU.

Germany has been taking in the majority of the migrants but is starting to limit migrant access because of the mass influx.

“Germany is doing what is morally and legally required of us, no more and no less,” German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Thursday. “That’s why this problem concerns all of us in Europe.”

British Prime Minister David Cameron said that because “Britain is a moral nation” they will fulfill their responsibilities.

Germany and France have sent a proposal to all EU nations with suggested amounts of migrants for each country but has found backlash from the smaller nations.  CNN reported over 350,000 migrants have come into Europe this year, a level not seen since World War II.  Over 3,600 people have died trying to make the journey.

Hungary Closes Train Station to Migrants; Icelanders Call For Government to Help

Migrants flooding into Hungary have begun rioting over the government’s decision to close a train station in Budapest, keeping them from streaming into Germany.

Police erected a blockage at the city’s main train terminal as about 1,000 migrants chanted “Germany! Germany!”  Later the protesters sat down in front of the barricaded entrance.

Government spokesman Zoltan Kovacs told the BBC that the country was enforcing the EU’s immigration laws.

The EU has a rule called the “Dublin Regulation” which requires all refugees to register for asylum in the first EU nation they enter.  Because Italy and Greece are overwhelmed with hundreds of thousands of migrants, many skip those checkpoints and travel to other EU nations.

“Dublin rules are still valid and we expect European member states to stick to them,” a German interior ministry spokesman said.

EU leaders have already approved measures to help Greece and Italy with registration of migrants and are looking at ways to streamline the process of immigrants coming to other EU countries.

Meanwhile, tens of thousands of Icelandic residents have called on their government to welcome refugees into their country as way to escape the violence of the Middle East.