Europe’s leaders to press Turkey for ‘large-scale’ deportation of migrants

European leaders will push Turkey at a summit on 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 press 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.

For the first time since the beginning of the migration crisis, I can see a European consensus emerging.

European Council president Donald Tusk

On Saturday, European Migration Commissioner Dimitris Avramapoulos said Greece – already struggling with a build-up 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. Prime Minister Mark Rutte of the Netherlands, which currently holds the bloc’s rotating presidency, told reporters he hoped Turkey would agree Monday “to accelerate readmission of third country nationals and economic migrants.”

Turkey migrants