Turkey agrees to take back people who don’t qualify for EU asylum

European diplomats are claiming a breakthrough in the continent’s migration crisis after reporting that Turkey has agreed to take back people not qualifying for asylum in the EU. The agreement came as the EU statistics agency reported that the number of people applying for asylum in the EU more than doubled in 2015, reaching a record 1.26 million. EU leaders are preparing for an emergency summit on Monday aimed at getting to grips with the biggest movement of refugees and migrants since the end of the second world war. Senior EU diplomats said that in negotiations on Thursday with Frans Timmermans, the vice-president of the European commission, the Turkish prime minister, Ahmet Davutoğlu, pledged that all “economic migrants” arriving in Greece and not qualifying for asylum could be returned to Turkey. The “agreement in principle” was hailed in Brussels as a breakthrough. Greece has been trying for more than two months to return almost 900 people to Turkey only to face stalemate, though more than 300 were readmitted to Turkey this week. “Ankara said this will continue,” a senior diplomat said. However, the chances of this development becoming part of the answer to Europe’s crisis are slim. In order to… Read full this story

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