The EU and Turkey will hold a special summit in early March to push forward a deal to stem the migration crisis, European Council President Donald Tusk said Friday.
EU leaders meeting in Brussels also unanimously opposed “unilateral actions” by member states after Austria said it would cap the daily number of asylum claims.
“We agreed that our joint action plan with Turkey remains a priority and we must do all we can to succeed,” Tusk told a press conference after the first day of a two-day European Union summit in Brussels.
“This is why we have the intention to organise a special meeting with Turkey in the beginning of March,” Tusk said without elaborating.
Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany—the EU country that received the most refugees last year at more than one million—said the special summit with Turkey could take place on March 5 or March 7.
She said the EU “must see quickly if measures work” under the plan agreed at another EU-Turkey summit in November, in which Turkey agreed to cut migrantflows in exchange for three billion euros in aid.
Pressure growing
Pressure to enforce the plan is growing as EU officials say thousands of migrants are still crossing the Aegean daily from Turkey after more than one million made the perilous journey last year, the greatest such movement in the bloc’s history.
A meeting of the leaders of 11 EU countries with Turkey had been planned before the full summit on Thursday but was cancelled after Turkey’s premier Ahmet Davutoglu pulled out following a bomb attack in Ankara.
Meanwhile a top UN official said Europe has “completely failed” in its response to the migrant crisis.
UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi, speaking in a German newspaper interview, referred to an EU deal struck last September on relocating 160,000 refugees from overstretched Greece and Italy to other EU states, but only about 600 have been moved until now.

Source: AFP, 2016-02-19