EU tweaks migrants deal with Turkey

EU officials have added last- minute changes to a pact with Turkey to halt the flow of migrants into Europe in an effort to make it legally watertight, but a standoff with Cyprus could yet scupper a deal at a summit.

Under a tentative agreement reached last week, Ankara would take back all migrants and refugees who enter the EU from its shores or are detained in its territorial waters, in return for more money, faster visa-free travel for Turks and a speeding up of its slow-moving EU membership negotiations.

For its part, the EU would admit one legal Syrian refugee directly from Turkey for each one trying to reach Europe by boat and taken back by Turkey from the Greek islands in a step meant to wreck the business model of people smugglers.

“We are certainly not giving Turkey a free ride,” European Commission vice president Frans Timmermans said. Ankara would have to enact measures within six weeks if Turks were to get visa-free travel to the 26-nation Schengen area in June. German chancellor Angela Merkel is pushing hardest for the deal after suffering heavy losses in regional elections on Sunday.

Merkel told parliament in Berlin on the eve of the Brussels summit that no one should be deceived by a lull in arrivals since Austria and Balkan states shut their borders. More than 43,000 migrants and refugees are bottled up in squalid conditions in Greece after Macedonia closed its border. More are arriving daily despite Nato’s Aegean sea patrols.

“The current easing that Germany and some other member states are experiencing is one thing. The situation in Greece is the other, and it must be a big concern to us all because it is not without consequences for us all in Europe,” Merkel said.

An agreement with Turkey would need to be followed by a deal among EU countries to accept quotas of refugees, she said, something several central European states have rejected.