On Monday, officials from the EU and Turkey are gathered in Brussels to do some talking about the refugee crisis that threatens to tear Europe apart at the seams. And make no mistake, “talk” is probably all they’ll do.
Last year, Europe and Turkey agreed on a so-called “joint action plan” which essentially amounted to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan extorting €3 billion from Brussels in exchange for a promise to curb people smuggling and stem the flow of migrants into Western Europe. As The Guardian notes, “several months on, the pact remains little more than a piece of paper.”
Although the check has been cut, it’s not entirely clear where the money went (surprise) and now that the effective closure of the Balkan route has created a severe bottleneck of refugees in Greece, Athens is very near to losing its mind.
As of Sunday, as many as 14,000 men, women, and children were stranded on Macedonia’s border which has been sealed and which migrant men have at various times tried to breach with homemade battering rams.
