EU agrees to new migration measures

‘Cautious optimism’ after a summit that produces a tentative deal with Turkey.

EU leaders agreed Thursday on new measures aimed at addressing Europe’s migration crisis, including a tentative cash-for-cooperation deal with Turkey and a push to boost protection of the Union’s external borders.

It was the fourth time in six months that the leaders gathered in Brussels to forge a European response to the massive influx of refugees from the Middle East. Once again regional and political divisions made finding consensus difficult before the summit wrapped up a few minutes after midnight on Friday morning.

But despite frustration on the part of many of summit participants that they were still grappling with issues they have fought over for months — including a relocation plan for asylum-seekers — leaders were determined to show that they were taking concrete steps to mitigate the crisis.

“Tonight leaders took some important decisions that will help secure the European Union’s external borders,” said European Council President Donald Tusk, who expressed “cautious optimism” about the results of the meeting.

“Progress on genuine border security is a very real achievement of tonight,” Tusk said. “It is our first obligation to protect the European community and to guarantee public order.”

Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said EU countries also promised to deliver on humanitarian aid contributions they had previously committed to, after criticism from Brussels that their money was not flowing quickly enough to address the crisis.

“I had one objective today,” Juncker said. “That was to lead member states back to the promises they made on the 23rd of September” at their last migration summit on humanitarian aid. “They promised today that they will match the contribution of the European Commission, and that means money coming from the European budget in the coming weeks.”

The agreement with Turkey proved the most important decision of the evening. The pending deal would offer significant financial aid — Turkey wants up to €3 billion — and a promise to consider speeding up visa liberalization for Turkish citizens traveling to Europe in exchange for help coping with the flow of Syrian refugees through the country.

While the deal got a preliminary show of support from EU leaders, it is by no means final. Some countries, such as France and Greece, are wary of giving Turkey too much before seeing proof that Ankara will offer real cooperation. Others, such as Germany, are concerned about the money.

“An agreement with Turkey only makes sense if it contains the flow of refugees,” Tusk said.

The actual amount of aid money in the package is yet to be defined, Juncker said the final amount will “be part of the discussion in the coming days with Turkey.”

“No amount of money has been set,” said French President François Hollande after the meeting. “It is not about giving money, it is about looking at what these funds can produce in terms of effect.”

The issue of Turkish accession to the EU has been a thorny one, with talks on hold for several years over concerns about Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s authoritarian rule.

The proposed deal would hold out the possibility of re-opening at least some parts of those negotiations. The summit conclusions say that the accession process “needs to be re-energized with a view to achieving progress in the negotiations,” and that progress will be assessed in 2016.

“Turkey has agreed to make the position of refugees there better,” said German Chancellor Angela Merkel. “That they are ready to provide better social support, for example, the form of health care. That’s part of what we have to understand as globalization… We need direction, we need order, we need the ability to plan and that means we need to share the burden…. I would say that we have come a big step forward.”

Another key part of the agreement still to be finalized, sources said, is the promise to speed up the liberalization of visas for Turkish citizens traveling to Europe.

“If there are visa liberalizations, it needs to be on an extremely precise and controlled basis,” said Hollande. 

Tusk said he still wants to see concrete steps from Ankara on helping reduce the flow of migrants as part of any deal. “We need something like guarantees that Turkey’s response to our offer will be as concrete and substantive as ours,” he said.

But during the summit discussion leaders were once again split over the question of whether to work toward instituting a permanent relocation scheme for refugees. Discussion on the issue — a bone of contention since it was first proposed by the European Commission in May — has slowed progress toward agreement on a summit conclusion.

Sources said Sweden and Germany pushed for a line in the final summit conclusions referring to Juncker’s State of the Union speech call for a “permanent relocation mechanism, which will allow us to deal with crisis situations more swiftly in the future.”

But Eastern European countries in the Visegrad group (Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia) opposed including any reference to a permanent relocation scheme.

In a statement issued before the beginning of the summit, the Visegrad group said that any measures that put the Union’s “common effort at risk, including a permanent relocation scheme, should be avoided.”

Discussion on the issue became especially animated during dinner, according to diplomatic sources, with Merkel insisting that a permanent relocation system had to be part of the long-term migration plan.

The summit discussion hit another snag when Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi took Tusk to task over a comment the Council president made last week to the European Parliament, according to diplomatic source.

Renzi was upset that Tusk had mentioned Hungary and Italy in the same sentence in discussing the challenges of the migration crisis. “Observing rules will always mean sacrificing part of our interests,” Tusk said in his speech last week. “I would like to dedicate these words to the Hungarians and the Italians, to the Slovaks and the Greeks.”

Renzi, the source said, told Tusk during the summit meeting that Italy was on the front line of saving refugee lives while Hungary was building fences to keep them out.

In an exchange described as “civil” by a source in the room, Tusk replied to Renzi that he was not talking about saving lives or building fences but simply about respecting rules that Europe adopts and that are binding.

Leaders also discussed a proposal to French proposal to build up an EU border guard body.

The leaders promised to “work towards the gradual establishment of an integrated management system for external borders.”

Countries are aiming at a shared management of borders, with responsibilities split between member states and EU authorities. So far France is the only country to have put forward a proposal, in the longer term, for a beefed-up EU border control body.

The seriousness of the border issue was illustrated vividly during the meeting, as Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borissov had to leave the summit early to deal with an incident involving a violent clash between migrants and border guards on his country’s border with Turkey.

“For me it’s the next argument for how important our discussion was tonight,” said Tusk. “Protection of our external orders is our main priority today.”

Leaders also agreed to boost external border protection by expanding the powers of its Frontex agency into “a more operational body.”

“Our aim is to give Frontex the right to return irregular migrants on its own initiative, and to make it more proactive in protecting the external borders.” Tusk said.

The discussion on Europe’s migration crisis came after quick talks early in the evening on the U.K. referendum on EU membership, on climate change, and on governance of the Economic and Monetary Union.

Click Here: France Football Shop

British Prime Minister David Cameron, under pressure to be more forthcoming on proposals for EU reforms, told fellow EU leaders he would put them down in writing in early November. The leaders agreed to discuss them in more detail at their next summit, in December.

Maïa de la Baume, Quentin Ariès and Zeke Turner contributed to this article.