Resumen de The EU-Turkey Agreement: a Controversial Attempt at Patching up a Major Problem
On 18 March 2016 the European Union and Turkey reached an agreement aimed at solving the issue of the high numbers of migrants crossing the Mediterranean Sea from Turkey to Greece. This agreement intended to close the people-smuggling routes and reduce the number of migrants entering the EU. It focused principally on the following issues: returning to Turkey any migrant entering Greece from Turkey irregularly; and resettling, for every migrant readmitted by Turkey, another Syrian from Turkey. In order to compensate Turkey, the EU committed to accelerating the visa liberalisation roadmap and allocating six billion euros to Turkey to deal with the refugee crisis. Finally, both the EU and Turkey agreed to improve humanitarian conditions in Syria to allow Syrians to remain in the country. This agreement has been heavily criticised by humanitarian organisations and by the European population, and its consistency with international human rights and European laws on refugees is questionable. The agreement comprises nine action points. This paper will analyse five of those points in order to establish whether it respects EU and international law.
