Germany has warned that the future of Europe’s refugee swap deal is “fully unclear” and that a collapse would require new EU negotiations about migrant burden-sharing.
With migrant numbers arriving in Greece rising once more, and EU tensions with Turkey over the future of the March deal, Austria has said it will keep closed “indefinitely” its border to the so-called Balkan route.
A year after a surge in migrants seeking asylum in Europe – in particular Austria, Germany and Sweden – Berlin’s federal financial ministry has warned in a paper that “further action on Europe level” cannot be ruled out.
The paper, leaked to Der Spiegel magazine, notes growing problems returning refugees from Greece to Turkey as agreed last March.
Should that deal collapse completely, Berlin officials will push for a “reliable” full-scale sealing of the Greece outer EU border or else Berlin will extend its own national border checks into Switzerland and France, in particular if there is a “shift in migration routes”.
Austria’s foreign minister Sebastian Kurz has said he does not see a situation where Vienna will reopen its borders in the direction of the so-called Balkan route, a major channel for asylum seekers a year ago.
"The Balkan route has to remain closed, because it cannot be our goal that a refugee flees from an EU country like Greece into a non-EU country like Macedonia," Mr Kurz told Germany's Rheinische Post.
Meanwhile, the spike in asylum seekers arriving in Greece from across the Aegean Sea has sparked fears about the future of the EU-Turkey migration deal. The rate of new arrivals to camps on the Greek islands has doubled since last month’s failed coup in Turkey. After about 1,700 refugees arrived in Greece in May, almost 1,400 have already arrived so far this month, although a marked decrease from August 2015 when more than 100,000 refugees arrived.
From Thursday to yesterday of this week, 261 people arrived in Greece – up from a few dozen a day in recent months. Yesterday, Greece’s coastguard rescued dozens of migrants after their boat ran aground off the southwestern tip of the Peloponnese.
The new refugee surge brings to 58,000 the total of migrants marooned in Greece since the closure of the Balkan route last February, effectively sealing for migrants Greece’s northern border to Europe.
Aid agencies in the region have warned that a renewed surge in new arrivals bodes ill for Greek camps already filled beyond capacity. Despite the rise in numbers, Ankara says it is complying with its end of the migrant deal struck on March 20th.
Amid growing tensions with the EU, Turkey's ambassador to the EU told Germany's Die Welt daily that Ankara's goal is to become an EU member state on the 100th anniversary of the Turkish republic. "The Turkish government wants to join the EU by 2023," Selim Yenel said. "It would be the pinnacle for my country, being a member then."
However doubts are rising over Ankara’s EU hopes, in particular since its crackdown on opponents following last month’s failed coup. While Austria has dubbed a Turkey accession a “diplomatic fiction”, Ankara has been pressing for the EU to step up accession talks and to deliver on other conditions of the migration swap deal, in particular visa-free travel for Turkish citizens.
Turkish foreign minister Mevlut Cavusoglu told Germany's Bild tabloid: "It can't be that we implement everything that is good for the EU but that Turkey gets nothing in return."
However Germany’s deputy foreign minister, Michael Roth, has warned that many of 72 conditions for this deal were still open, meaning it was doubtful that the EU could grant visa-free travel by October, as agreed.
