Leaders meet in Brussels to agree details of plan to stop refugees and migrants coming to Europe but many have issues with deal

The EU and Turkey are set for confrontation over a deal on refugees as European leaders hold out on Ankara’s key demands to speed up EU membership talks and provide visa-free travel for Turkish citizens by June.



The EU’s 28 leaders are meeting in Brussels on Thursday to prepare for a summit on Friday with the Turkish prime minister, Ahmet Davutoğlu. They aim to agree the final details of a plan to stop migrants and refugees coming to Europe.



Turkey has agreed to take back any refugees and migrants who land on the Greek islands, including Syrian asylum seekers. In exchange, Ankara has called on Brussels to restart its long-stalled EU membership talks and lift visa restrictions for Turks travelling in the EU’s 26-country Schengen zone by the end of June. Davutoğlu is also seeking an extra €3bn (£2.3bn) to help refugees in Turkey, in addition to €3bn pledged last year.



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But a draft version of the summit communique suggests little progress has been made since the broad outlines of the deal were sketched out 10 days ago.

Turkey has pressed for the opening of membership talks in five policy areas, known as chapters, including the rule of law and media. But the EU is only offering to “prepare for the decision on the opening of new chapters in the accession negotiations as soon as possible”.

The Cypriot president, Nicos Anastasiades, has warned he will veto any move to reopen Turkey’s EU membership talks until Ankara agrees to open its ports and airports to Cypriot traffic.



The question of extra funds to help Syrian refugees in Turkey is also left unresolved. The EU states that it is “ready to decide on additional funding”, without making any firm commitment.



On the most prized issue for Turkey, visa liberalisation, EU officials maintain there will be no shortcuts. The EU says it is up to the Turkish government to meet 72 conditions, if it wants to ease visa restrictions for its citizens by its preferred June deadline. These bureaucratic hurdles range from issuing passports with EU-standard security chips to stepping up surveillance of its borders with more air and sea patrols.



One EU official said any of these issues were “a potential dealbreaker”. The lack of progress in the latest draft underscores that many member states have problems with the deal. And Donald Tusk, the president of the European council, said it needed to be “rebalanced”.



The broad outlines of the EU-Turkey plan were agreed by the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, and Davutoğlu but came as a shock to most other EU leaders.



In Turkey’s favour, European leaders are desperate to make a deal in the hope of stemming the flow of people arriving in Europe. More than 1.1 million refugees and migrants came to Europe in 2015, including about 363,000 Syrians who lodged asylum applications, while 143,634 people have arrived in Greece from Turkey this year so far, according to figures from the UN high commissioner for refugees (UNHCR).



The EU has pledged to resettle Syrian refugees currently in Turkey, but figures that emerged on Wednesday suggested only 72,000 places would be available, with uncertainty about the bloc’s commitment beyond this number.

Of the 72,000 places identified by the Commission for Syrian refugees, 18,000 would be available under a voluntary resettlement scheme agreed last year.



A further 54,000 places may be available “if needed” under a separate scheme designed to spread asylum seekers more evenly around the bloc, although this would require a change to EU law.

Frans Timmermans, vice-president of the European commission, said the EU would continue to help after these places were used up. He pointed to “a coalition of the willing”, made up of EU member states including Germany and Austria, who have pledged to resettle Syrians once irregular arrivals had stopped. “When we succeed in breaking the pattern of irregular arrivals one-for-one will not become none-for-none,” Timmermans said.

But the various EU schemes to rehouse refugees are painfully slow. A plan to find homes for 160,000 refugees has led to only 937 being resettled, according to the latest data.

Several countries are concerned that the Turkey deal could mean large-scale resettlement of Syrians in Europe. A senior EU official said there “cannot be an open-ended commitment on the EU side”.

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The numbers discussed indicate that the EU wants to scale back help offered to refugees in Europe. Syrians in Greece will go to the back of the queue for resettlement in Europe once they are returned to Turkey. “Priority will be given to Syrians who have not previously entered the EU irregularly,” states an unpublished draft.

With the EU ready to declare that all irregular migration from Turkey will come to an end, David Cameron is set to warn other leaders that the bloc must be prepared for a migration crisis coming from Libya and the rest of north Africa this summer, a UK government source said ahead of the council meeting.

The official source said Cameron would make the point that EU countries must “remember to think about the big picture” and recall that the crisis started with people crossing the western Mediterranean to Italy.

“While in the last few weeks and months, and through the winter, the eastern Mediterranean route has been the one of most concern [...] we should be thinking and preparing for what happens in summer on the western Mediterranean route where this issue started to flare last April with migrants coming from Libya and north Africa,” the source said.

The UK will also point out that closing the eastern route from Turkey to Greece may push the 50% of migrants who are not Syrian through north Africa to take the western route that involves a longer sea crossing.