EU leaders look to ease migrant crisis after agreeing outline of deal to put to Turkey

EU leaders agreed the outline of an agreement they hope to put to Turkey this morning to ease the migrant crisis.

Following more than four hours of discussions, many of the details were thrashed out between the 28 leaders.

But one of the most intractable involving Cyprus continuing veto on negotiating EU accession for Turkey remained on the table.

The Turkish prime minister Ahmet Davutoglu is due to meet the leaders on Friday morning when they will put the deal to him.

They will hope to find a form of wording around the reopening of accession discussions will be sufficient to sign the deal.

One of the other important areas for Turkey - visa liberalisation for short term 90 day stays - by June rather than October will be on offer - provided Turkey can fulfil all 72 conditions. At the moment more than 30 are outstanding.

A sticking point for many countries was that the deal on sending back refugees, including Syrians, to Turkey would be in line with international asylum laws.

They accepted assurances that everyone that applies for asylum in the EU, and in this case in Greece, would have their applications fully processed in line with international law and that there would be no blanket returns.

The details have still to be worked out including the timing of taking the migrants that are currently on the Greek islands to the mainland and announcing that any new refugees that arrive will be processed, but will be then automatically returned to Turkey where they can apply to come to Europe.

This the EU explains is to ‘break the business model’ of the smugglers. Turkey will also be asked to ensure that the rest of its border with the EU, including Bulgaria, is sealed.

Member states have pledged to take 160,000 from camps, and from Italy and Greece, and these places will be used to absorb the 44,000 refugees currently in Greece.

After the discussions last night German Chancellor Angela Merkel said that Greece will need considerable help to process the migrants quickly and that member states were being asked to send experts.

Agreement was also reached on the €3bn to be spent on Syrian refugees in Turkey and for another €3 billion by 2018.

However much will depend on agreeing a form of words acceptable to Turkey to deal with the Cypriot issue.

Negotiations are reaching a successful conclusion between the Turk and Greek Cypriots on the divided island. But Cyprus wants Turkey to allow their planes to land and their ships to dock in Turkey.