Bulgaria's PM Hails EU-Turkey Agreement as Best Compromise

Politics » BULGARIA IN EU | March 8, 2016, Tuesday // 10:39
Bulgaria: Bulgaria's PM Hails EU-Turkey Agreement as Best Compromise Bulgaria's Prime Minister Boyko Borisov. File photo, BGNES

"Nothing better" can be done as of the moment than the agreement between the EU and Turkey on the migrant crisis reached early on Tuesday, Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borisov has said.

Brussels and Ankara said they had agreed in principle on the prerequisites to curbing the migrant influx into Europe from Turkey.

The latter country surprisingly set additional conditions in return for its help to stem the flow which made EU leaders extend the Monday summit into the small hours on Tuesday. Eventually a decision was taken that the EU's final position would be announced after a March 17-18 meeting.

On Tuesday morning Borisov wrote on Facebook that the agreement would crack down on "this dirty business" of people smuggling and would put and end to the journeys of migrants across the Aegean Sea from Turkey to Greece.

"As we have discussed, migrants will be accepted only through [border crossing points], with finger prints, medical checks, and identification.

Borisov defended the decision to grant Turkey a visa waiver and to consider opening a new chapter in Turkey's EU accession negotiations.

"There were indeed many disputes as to whether the issuance of visas to Turkish citizens should be sped up, but just as before, our position on this issue was that the visa liberalization with Turkey could be done and this was accepted."

As regards the opening of 5 chapters on the road to Turkey's accession into the EU, a text of compromise was adopted. I think that a very good message is being sent to society and respectively a bad message to traffickers and people smugglers," he added.

The EU stopped short of promising Turkey it would open any new chapters, but said it would prepare to produce a decision soon.

Talks were frozen in the mid-2000s, after Turkey had been an accession candidate for nearly half a century, due to disagreement on key chapters and to a spat over the division of Cyprus.

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Tags: Bulgaria, turkey, Boyko Borisov, migrant crisis, migrants, EU

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