Europe has placed control over the refugee situation on Turkey
This was a decision that Angela Merkel fought for all winter. As Germany's chancellor, she knows better than anyone that physical walls are unstable. And in our time, a wire barrier, which the countries of the former Yugoslavia relied on, cannot remain insurmountable. The most reliable, impenetrable fortifications are bureaucratic. And from now on, the paper Fortress Europe is untouchable again.
No matter how an illegal immigrant now breaks into the EU, he will no longer be met with benefits or the prospect of asylum. His fate is Turkey. Since autumn, Turkey had been offered 3 billion euros in aid for two years. Now they've been given 6 billion, but over three years. Until the end of 2018. Germany's share in this amount is about 2 billion. Given that keeping one refugee in Germany costs about 13,000 euros on average (benefits, housing, security, medical care, language courses, school/kindergarten, bureaucratic support), economically the deal with Erdogan is good business! Politically – excellent. Morally – quite tolerable: these 6 billion will go to support refugees in Turkish camps. Under the supervision of European controllers.
In theory, the EU plans to take one asylum seeker from a Turkish camp for every illegal immigrant expelled from Europe, by the way, of its own choosing. But at the same time, the number of such people cannot even in theory exceed 72,000 for the entire EU.
Merkel's entire delicate plan rests on the idea of destroying the network of smuggler-guides. Who will pay them 5,000–7,000 euros per person for the crossing from Turkey to Greece if there is a 100% guarantee that the refugee will be returned from Greece to Turkey?!
An elegant and ruthless solution. Typical Merkel. This is how the incomparable Bobby Fischer tormented his opponents in chess.
And yet many thought they had checkmated her. Critics of the chancellor's policy do not want to ask themselves: what should Germany have done in the critical situation of spring-summer? Drown illegal immigrants off the Greek coast? Gas them at the EU border? Let them die in a neutral zone, like Polish Jews in the 1930s? Play dumb like France? Dig another English Channel?
In fact, Merkel had no choice... Plus, of course, she did not expect such a mass. No one did. This is an amphibious operation many times larger than what the Allies carried out in France in 1944. No one in Europe could imagine that not thousands but hundreds of thousands of people could overcome such an unimaginable route...
So, in Brussels last weekend, Turkey got a little more money. And also, from July 1 – visa-free entry to the EU. True, knowledgeable people claim that the Turks would have gotten it anyway, just a couple of months later. Brussels set them 75 conditions for obtaining the status, 35 of which have already been met.
Last weekend, the first 100 officials from the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BamS) flew from Germany to Greece. They will handle the paperwork for returnees there. But they are just the first hundred swallows. Greece is hiring an additional 4,000 people for this work, with at least half of them to be seconded from the relevant structures of EU countries.
Meanwhile, the machine has started working. And Chancellor Merkel can finally relax a little.
Arseniy KAMATOZOV.
"Russkaya Germaniya"