MOSCOW (Sputnik) — On Monday, during the Turkey-EU summit, Ankara pledged to readmit one undocumented migrant from Greek islands and send in their place one Syrian asylum seeker to the bloc in exchange for the acceleration of visa liberalization negotiations and EU accession talks.
“The target date for the entry into force of the agreement is rescheduled to June 1, 2016. Turkey seems to be committed to fulfill all of the 72 criteria by this new target date. However certain EU member countries may come up with new excuses not to implement the agreement,” Yasar Yakis said Wednesday.
He added the the Greek Cypriot Administration “may come up with conditions of political nature before agreeing to support the agreement.”
Yakis pointed out that the "one in, one out" Turkish-EU plan does not seem feasible since "if Turkey maintains its open door policy for Syrian refugees, the number of Syrian refugees living in Turkey will never decrease."
The former foreign minister added that the European Union would have the privilege of selectively choosing the refugees for resettlement, which “means that EU countries will receive the educated and skilled applicants and those who are not educated and skilled will remain in Turkey.”
Europe has been beset by a massive refugee crisis, with hundreds of thousands of undocumented migrants fleeing their home countries in the Middle East and North Africa to escape violence and poverty. The EU border agency Frontex recorded over 1.83 million illegal border crossings in the European Union in 2015.
