The Antithesis of Refugee Protection – The Case of South Africa 1
10. A Short Sighted and One Side Deal: Why The EU-Turkey Statement
10.5. Conclusion
necessary to end the human suffering and restore public order”. The Statement which was agreed as a temporary measure is in its fourth year and readmission of migrants and rejected asylum seekers became a central theme in European policies to manage migration. The new Pact on Migration and Asylum puts an emphasis on ‘return’ and even proposes solidarity in returning people through return sponsorships.
The EU Commission identifies the legal basis of irregular migrants being returned from the Greek islands to Turkey as the bilateral readmis-sion agreement between Greece and Turkey and notes that “from 1 June 2016, this will be succeeded by the EU-Turkey Readmission Agreement, following the entry into force of the provisions on readmission of third country nationals of this agreement.” (EU Commission Press Release, 2016). It is reported that Turkey unilaterally suspended its readmission agreement with Greece in 2018 as a response to a Greek court decision to release eight former Turkish soldiers who fled the country a day after the July 15, 2016 coup attempt (Hurriyet Daily News, 2018). Moreover, Turkish Minister of Foreign Affairs Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu declared that Turkey suspended the EU-Turkey Readmission Agreement in July 2019 due to the fact that the visa liberalisation process for Turkish citizens had not been completed by the EU (Euractive, 2019). If these reports are accurate, this means the return of persons from Greece to Turkey under the Statement have no legal basis.
minimum, all future EU-third country arrangements should observe the following principles so as not to repeat the mistakes of the EU-Turkey Statement. First, the EU-third country arrangements should not be in the form of soft law and the EU should own these future agreements and take responsibility for the agreed measures. Second, objective and reliable monitoring, supervision and accountability mechanisms should be intro-duced to safeguard the fundamental rights of all persons who are subjects of these arrangements. Third, readmission agreements, as shown in the case of Turkey, can easily be denounced and persuading transit countries or countries of origin to take people back is no easy task. Hence, placing
‘return’ at the centre of supranational migration and asylum laws and policies is not viable and makes ‘refugees’ susceptible to be used as chips in readmission negotiations. Finally, containment policies which leave human beings in legal and actual limbo are not feasible ways to deal with a migration situation, crisis or not.
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