European
President Jean Claude Juncker warned the deal between the EU and Turkey
on the control of the refugee flows is in jeopardy of being scrapped,
in an interview to Austrian newspaper ‘Kurier’, Saturday. ‘The danger is
high. The success of of the agreement until now has been fragile.
The
President of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdgan, has repeatedly implied that he
intends to challenge it’, Juncker stressed in the interview. ‘If this
happens, we should expect migrants will start coming to Europe en
masse’, he went on to say. Meanwhile, as the according to the Greek
authorities, there are a total of 57,077 people being hosted in
organised centres throughout Greece, with the capacity of the current
hotspots being a little over 60,000. Even though the refuge flows are
notably down compared to the summer of 2015, people continue to cross
into Greek territory, with 118 refugees crossing the Aegean Sea on
Friday. The controversial deal managed to largely curb the migrant flows
into Europe, however, the Commission’s efforts to share the burdens of
the crisis across other EU countries via the relocation scheme, thus
alleviating the pressures on Greece and Italy, has failed. The failed
coup attempt in Turkey caused the dismissal of thousands of Turkish
state officials, many of which were responsible for implementing the
EU-Turkey refugee deal. Just three days after the coup attempt a group
of Turkish officials dealing with the refugee deal were recalled to
Turkey and were not replaced. In the interview Juncker expressed his
concerns on the internal political developments in both Poland and
Hungary, saying that the Polish government’s actions on the operation of
the country’s Constitutional Court constituted a ‘blow to the rule of
Law’, while the PM of Hungary, Viktor Orban, likened the migration as
‘poison’ and said he would hold a referendum on the matter.