Refugee crisis: latest news from across Europe 1.8.16
Topic
01 August 2016
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EU-TURKEY: Turkey to back out of EU migrant deal if no visa-free travel (EurActiv, link):
"Turkey would have to back out of its agreement with the European Union to stem the flow of migrants into the bloc if the EU does not deliver visa-free travel for Turks, Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu has said.
Visa-free access to the EU – the main reward for Ankara’s collaboration in choking off an influx of migrants into Europe – has been subject to delays due to a dispute over Turkish anti-terrorism legislation and Ankara’s crackdown after a failed coup.
Cavusoglu told Germany’s daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, in an interview to be published today (1 August), the agreement on stemming the refugee flow had worked because of “very serious measures” taken by Ankara.
“But all that is dependent on the cancellation of the visa requirement for our citizens, which is also an item in the agreement of 18 March,” Cavusoglu said in a release in advance of comments to be published in the newspaper’s Monday edition."
SPAIN-MOROCCO: Presentation of the new Migreurop report: Ceuta and Melilla, open-air migrant sorting centres at the gates of Africa
On 25 July 2016, Migreurop published a joint report resulting from cooperation and missions conducted in 2015 in northern Morocco in the proximity of Nador and in the Spanish north African enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla. The missions were carried out by GADEM, La Cimade, Migreurop, and Migreurop Spain. These fact-finding missions included visits to detention centres and border fences in Ceuta and Melilla, as well as interviews with institutional actors, activists, members of associations and migrants themselves.
EU: Commission awards €11 million in emergency funding to Greece and Italy
"The European Commission has today awarded an extra €11 million in emergency funding to Greece and Italy under the Internal Security Fund (ISF) to strengthen the reception and registration capacity in Greece and support search and rescue activities by Italy at sea."
EU: No one knows how many children are dying in the Mediterranean (The Telegraph, link): "In the end, there was nothing more to do but tie lifejackets to the bodies to stop them sinking, in the hope they would be picked up by another boat.
As they went about their grim task, at the scene of a capsized wooden boat in the central Mediterranean, the volunteers spotted another body floating beneath the surface.
It was a baby, around one year old, with its little arms outstretched beneath the waves."
See also: In Potters' Fields (pdf): what happens to those who die in the Mediterranean?
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