Turkey and Greece pledged yesterday to work together to implement a “game-changing” proposal to ease Europe’s migrant crisis, even as the UN and rights groups sounded grave concerns about the plan’s legality.
European Union leaders, struggling to cope with the continent’s worst migrant crisis since World War II, in principle backed a Turkish proposal to take back all illegal migrants landing on the overstretched Greek islands, at talks in Brussels on Monday.
Ankara also proposed an arrangement under which the EU would resettle one Syrian refugee from camps in Turkey in exchange for every Syrian that Turkey takes from Greece, in a bid to reduce the incentive for people to board boats for Europe.
EU officials have hailed the deal as a breakthrough, but the head of the UN refugee agency cast doubt on the legality of sending people back to Turkey, while Amnesty International said the plan “dealt a death blow to the right to seek asylum”.
“As a first reaction I’m deeply concerned about any arrangement that would involve the blanket return of anyone from one country to another without spelling out the refugee protection safeguards under international law,” UNHCR chief Filippo Grandi told the European Parliament in Strasbourg.
He said the plan, which EU leaders hope to agree formally at a summit next week, did not offer sufficient guarantees under international law, adding that refugees should only be returned to a country if it could be proved that their asylum application would be properly processed.
Grandi called for refugees to be screened before being sent away from Greece “to identify highly at-risk categories that may not be appropriate for return”.
Rights group Amnesty International said the proposal was full of “moral and legal flaws” and along with Human Rights Watch, challenged the idea that Turkey was a “safe country” to which migrants could return.
“The idea of bartering refugees for refugees is not only dangerously dehumanising, but also offers no sustainable long-term solution to the ongoing humanitarian crisis,” Amnesty’s Iverna McGowan said.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, speaking in Berlin alongside German Chancellor Angela Merkel - a key player in the migrant drama - said he was “concerned that many EU countries are adopting increasingly restrictive asylum policies”.
European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker, who called the plan a “real game changer”, insisted that it was “legally feasible”.