EU to push Turkey to take back migrants on ‘large-scale’

BRUSSELS: European leaders will push Turkey at a summit Monday to agree to ‘ large- scale’ deportations of economic migrants from Greece, as EU chief Donald Tusk says he sees the first hints of a resolution to the migrant crisis.

With a fresh surge expected in the warmer spring weather, the European Union’s 28 leaders are pinning much of their hopes for reducing the chaos on new commitments from Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu.

The EU will also push Ankara to drastically reduce the huge flow of migrants into Europe, as Turkey is the launch pad for most of the more than one million refugees and migrants who have come to the continent since early 2015.

On Saturday, European Migration Commissioner Dimitris Avramapoulos said Greece — already struggling with a buildup of 30,000 migrants — was expected to receive ‘another 100,000’ by the end of March.

But lingering tensions flared when Turkish police seized an opposition newspaper at the weekend and Brussels warned Ankara it had to respect media freedom in its decade-long bid for EU membership — also a topic in the migrant talks.

Tusk, the European Council president and summit host, said in his invitation letter that success depended largely on securing Turkey’s agreement at the summit for the ‘ large- scale’ readmission from Greece of economic migrants who do not qualify as refugees.

“It would effectively break the business model of the smugglers,” Tusk said when he also raised the idea on Thursday in Ankara with Davutoglu. — AFP