Sunday's agreement between the EU and Turkey promises to decrease the inflow of migrants to the continent. Turkey is now obliged to take any measures to keep migrants on its territory. It will also secure better conditions for these people and will take them back in case they manage to escape. Apart from the €3 billion package, Turkey asked for the cancellation of the visa regime and for accelerating the EU accession process that has been ongoing since 1987.
Ahead of the EU-Turkey summit in Brussels on Sunday, Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico said: "A reasonable visa liberalisation process can be endorsed, but not before Turkey meets the requirements, such as implementing the action plan to contain migrants in its territory and fully carrying out the readmission agreement". With respect to Turkey's EU accession process, the Slovak premier said that while it may benefit from some extra 'dynamics', he doesn't expect it to advance considerably.
Increasingly, diplomatic circles have been criticising Greece for not being able to protect the EU's outer borders. "Instead of solving protection of the Schengen border, we keep on negotiating with Turkey and giving it money. That only means that we resigned on our ability to safeguard the Schengen area border."
Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico hopes the time is coming for expelling Greece from the Schengen Area, the press agency TASR learnt that ahead of the EU-Turkey summit. He wants to open this topic at the Visegrad 4 meeting in Prague on Thursday.
