Deal Unwinds Already
It took precisely one day for the rest of Europe to realize Merkel has gone mad with her “Deal with the Devil” that would have granted visa access to 79 million Turkish citizens in return for Turkey halting 2 million Syrian refugees from moving into Greece.
Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy told Le Monde newspaper that he was “totally opposed to the idea. In Germany, Merkel’s CSU party is in revolt. And a senior EU official commented “The idea that Turkey will get a freebie on visa liberalisation is a joke.”
This is round two of a well-deserved “go to hell” message to Merkel. Will her majesty pay any more attention this time?
EU leaders Recoil From Turkey’s Demands
The Financial Times reports EU Leaders Recoil From Turkey’s Demands.
My title “EU leaders Recoil from Merkel’s Deal With the Devil” is more appropriate.
The EU’s latest migration master plan rests on a huge promise to Ankara that could prove impossible to fulfil — visa-free access to Europe for 75m Turks.
But politicians in Europe are already recoiling. François Hollande, the French president, is watchful of his right-flank; his predecessor Nicolas Sarkozy told Le Monde newspaper that he was “totally opposed to the removal of visas for 80m or so Turks who would then be able to travel freely in the Schengen zone”. In Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel’s CSU sister party and some centre-left SPD figures are rallying against the measure.
That disquiet is also evident in the European Parliament, which must approve any visa decision.
Manfred Weber, a German CSU MEP who leads the centre-right EPP bloc, the biggest in the parliament, told the FT that he saw “large obstacles” to visa liberalisation including the sensitive issue of Turkey’s status as a “safe” country, its data-protection standards, and police and judicial co-operation.
Under Turkey’s EU “visa road map”, Ankara must meet 72 criteria that EU leaders insist will still be applied. These range from the technical to the highly political, including rewriting terror laws and recognising the Cypriot government in Nicosia that Turkey has shunned for four decades.
“The idea that Turkey will get a freebie on visa liberalisation is a joke,” the senior EU official said, pointing out that a commission recommendation is just the first step of the process. “This is not as easy as they think.”
Marc Pierini, a former EU ambassador to Turkey, said that, if Ankara meets the criteria, Europe would be trapped. “I don’t see France ever accepting the deal this year when elections are close,” he said. “I don’t believe for a minute EU countries want progress on all fronts.”
Then there is the thorny question of Cyprus. Cypriot visitors to Turkey must apply as nationals from the “Greek Cypriot Administration of Southern Cyprus” — an indignity the EU wants corrected. Some compromises are under discussion, but the recognition issue has proved insoluble for decades.
In Brussels, diplomats are already joking that the EU migration plan is so ambitious that it might as well “cover the Israel-Palestine conflict as well”.
Against the Deal
It seems everyone is against the deal but chancellor Merkel, Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkish citizens, and the Devil.
Heading into the summit with Turkey, the EU bent over backwards to ignore Erdogan’s takeover of Turkey’s largest newspaper effectively making Erdogan a de-facto dictator. For details please see In Bed with a Dictator.
At the summit, Merkel managed to ramrod through a deal in which senior EU diplomats accused the chancellor of backstabbing. Others described Merkel’s methods “brutal”.
For details, please see Needs of the “One”; Merkel’s Backstabbing; Devil Cheers.
What Merkel Forgot
Apparently Merkel forgot that coercing her fellow summit attendees would not be sufficient. She now needs to coerce the EU parliament. Factions that include the views of centrist Nicolas Sarkozy and France’s anti-immigration leader Marine Le Pen.
So hey, Merkel may as well expand the agreement to cover the Israel Palestine conflict as well.
Merkel is not only in over her head, she is totally clueless and should resign.
Message Repeated
On February 28, Austria and Nine Balkan Countries Effectively Told Merkel “Go to Hell”.
That message rings louder today.
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
Merkel must have a brainworm
From: MishTalk To: rlbrown652012@yahoo.com Sent: Wednesday, March 9, 2016 3:12 PM Subject: [New post] EU leaders Recoil from Merkel’s Deal With the Devil #yiv8186979991 a:hover {color:red;}#yiv8186979991 a {text-decoration:none;color:#0088cc;}#yiv8186979991 a.yiv8186979991primaryactionlink:link, #yiv8186979991 a.yiv8186979991primaryactionlink:visited {background-color:#2585B2;color:#fff;}#yiv8186979991 a.yiv8186979991primaryactionlink:hover, #yiv8186979991 a.yiv8186979991primaryactionlink:active {background-color:#11729E;color:#fff;}#yiv8186979991 WordPress.com | mishgea posted: “Deal Unwinds AlreadyIt took precisely one day for the rest of Europe to realize Merkel has gone mad with her “Deal with the Devil” that would have granted visa access to 79 million Turkish citizens in return for Turkey halting 2 million Syrian refugee” | |
The EU is bound to break and fail, if Merkel gives access to Turks to roam freely within EU.
Well, what is she thinking…lol. Is she on drugs?? Doesn’t she have the capacity to think that Turkey is largely taking advantage of the crisis to enter EU without many criteria’s being unfulfilled…???
Uh, you mean the deal is a turkey?
leader of the past have always been opposed to Turkey being a member of the EU for this reason. This is nothing new here. There reason then as it is today, Free access to the European countries with generous welfare and jobs.
Many of the immigrants are unemployed and along with the wars in the Middle East are the root of the problem. But remember unemployment was and is a huge problem in the ME. It was this reason why the Egyptian president was ousted and will continue to be rampant in the ME for decades. Tribal war is the chosen profession for many there. There simply are not jobs for their highly educated youth.
Ack need an edit function European leaders of the past have been opposed to Turkey being a member of the EU for this reason. Sorry for the cryptic typing.
Since Merkel’s insane deal with Turkey which she made against EU council leader Donald Tusk behind his back and against the wishes of eastern european countries and france and UK and Denmark which all oppose visa-free travel for turks there has been developments by EU countries themselves against Merkel’s wishes.
Slovenia Unilaterally informed that it will close it’s borders completely from people trying to go through Slovenia to western european countries paying welfare (the first one being Slovenias neighbor and biggest trading partner Austria) Slovenia stated that if there would be people seeking asylum at it’s borders it would take maximum of 50 Asylum seekers per month (EU council lawyers earlier gave a verdict that Austrias limit of max 80 asylum seekers per day is legal so Slovenia picked it’s limit to be 50 asylum seekers per month) and probably nobody will be coming because Slovenia doesn’t give welfare.
Since no other country on the balkan trail wants to end up like Greece other countries, Croatia, Serbia and Macedonia, quickly followed Slovenias example and closed their borders.
I’m sure Donald Tusk was happy about getting back at Angela Merkel for backstabbing him and tweeted that “balkan route is now closed”
Remember Merkel opposed closing balkan ruote because it’s closure would make crytal clear for germans how stupid and irresponsible Merkel has been with her open doors policy inviting millions to come.
So now everybody is stuck in Greece and if only EU’s Juncker, who has been Merkel’s partner in every stupid decision, would just say that burden sharing from Greece is cancelled (spreading asylum seekers around europe by EU) and eu-hotspots are cancelled (quickly processing asylum applications in Greece and spreading the accepted ones around europe by EU) then there would be NO reason for anybody to come to Greece anymore because if there is no way to welfare paying european countries through Greece it would be extremely stupid to pay smugglers thousands of dollars and risk your life to get less in Greece than you would get in Turkey (Greece provides no welfare and accepted asylum seekers get a permit to stay and will sleep in the streets if they do not find work to pay for their own apartment and the youth unemployment for greeks is over 50%)
Hopefully Merkel is forced to resign by her own party because she is totally irresponsible politician completely unable to admit her many many mistakes which have cost german people and whole of europe too much.
Visa freedom for Turkey would mean:
1. all turkish criminals free access to europe with soft police and short sentences vs Turkey’s hard police and long sentences so hundreds of thousands of criminals would flood european countries from Turkey.
2. free access to 22 million Turkish kurds many of whom might “lose” their papers and claim that they are kurds from Syria or Iraq to try to get the free life from EU welfare states.
3. If Erdogan ups his conflict with kurds in Turkey many could be entitled to asylum just saying they are Turkish kurds who were threatened in Turkey based on EU’s soft asylum policies as trained by EASO which has been training every european country’s immigration authorities to act like Sweden aka accept almost everybody
4. Youth unemployment in Turkey is 20% and demographics are such that the number of youths will increase rapidly so many would seek employment from EU countries and there are already lots of unemployed youth in EU-countries.
5.Turkish countryside is poor and arranged marriages are common so many muslims from middle east could marry a turkish girl and get turkish passport and then be free to travel to EU.
6.Turkey has been the hotspot in manufacturing forged Syrian passports that were used by two of the paris attackers to travel to France so the next growth area would be manufacturing forged Turkish passports.
7. Poor Turks in turkish countryside would probably be really happy to loan their passport for 500-1000 euro for somebody who would like to reach Europe and seek asylum in western europe and then mail the passport back to it’s owner in Turkey and none is the wiser.
This kind of loaning of passports already happens in Sweden where somalis and iraqis who have gotten Swedish passport sell it to their countryman with similar appearance who uses it to travel to Sweden and seek Asylum but in Swedens case they simply inform swedish authorities thei passport has been lost/stolen when the person they loaned to is inside europe so they are not prosecuted for loaning their passport.
Turkey should never be given visa free travel to EUrope and taking asylum seekers from Turkish refugee camps is a stupid decision because it would create more people coming to Turkey and then EU would prov´bably take another batch just like there were two asylum seeker burden sharing decisions because the first decisions caused a surge of people to greece.
I’m from Europe and that’s why I ‘ll vote for Trump . There is just one reason , guess why .
Europe is the graveyard of failed civilizations for a reason.
EU and good old USA with their ideas of democracy and humans rights when it suits their agenda, started destabilizing the arab countries. Most of Syria is destroyed and Turkey ended up having more than 2 million of Syrian refugees.
Less than one million refugees have crossed so far in the EU. Those people have no other place to go.
Why should Turkey shoulder alone the burden of those refugees? It is only normal that EU helps Turkey. EU has no moral lessons to give here, Turkey is carrying the heavy burden.
Germany alone has OVER 1 millions asylum seekers just in 2015.
Sure EU should help Turkey , or more to the point refugees in Turkey , but it stops there .
The moral lessons are not a national affair , they are individual responsibility, and it should be kept that way . You understand that citizens in European countries are subject to the democratic majority vote , they have little say in how their government behaves most of the time and are for the most part slave to it . European leadership and decision making is impossible to penetrate at a level which counts .
So individual Europeans have every right to feel outrage at the decisions their leaders take , at their complicity with Turkish leaders , at migrant influxes . They should be outraged by their country’s involvements in the middle east … but you know what , it is beyond their comprehension , the relation their country has is not always obvious , and it is out of their daily reality .Beyond that they do not dare to question their own authorities , who manage to keep the burden of proof firmly on their side, if only in the sense that you cannot disprove them .
Maybe EU deserves what it has coming , but you won’t stop average people defending what they call their own, and if they are a little bit intelligent , they will work out exactly who has been taking them for a ride .
How is it the leader of a single country in the EU has so much power that she may also represent the EU in negotiations? Doesn’t the EU have ambassadors or elected EU officials to perform negotiation?
It is supposed to be so that everybody decides together but in practice Angela Merkel tells others what to do and most countries are afraid to turn against her but her insane asylum seeker policies finally blew that cap out of the bottle and whole of eastern europe thinks Merkel is incredibly stupid and Austria openly mocks her and France openly mocks her and Scandinavian politicians try to be nice but they have also border controls in their borders facing Germany to stop asylum seekers and this backstabbing of Donald Tusk and other EU-negotiators was hopefully Angela Merkels last hurrah and she will lose badly in German regional elections and be forced out by her own party who is split with the other half CSU and it’s leader Seehofer challenging the decisions Merkel has made constantly.
This just seems too dumb even for Merkel. She must have known this won’t get approved. When it is rejected, the Turks will be furious. Maybe she planned it that way – or perhaps she listened to advice from someone who wants her out.
Does it matter? Point is she gets judged by how she acts, and that is her responsibility and hers alone. If we turn that around it is her who is in the position to mislead her inferiors, her people, her country. A lot of responsibility, which should be continuously scrutinized for misuse. At that level people don’t accept an apology, or excuses, which is her approach – sentimental. That is why she is disliked, she is adjusting her nation and EU on sentimental grounds, and if we are cynical we could say that she is using sentiment over a catastrophe to manipulate and further her own means. I am not sure the world is ready to be ruled by one woman’s instinct, much as it has advantage over another man’s reason.
I still don’t see why Turkey has to do anything without major concessions from Europe. Turkey is already hosting millions of refugees so its better for it to have as many of them move to Europe as possible.
Rather than entertaining ideas about allowing Turkey entry into the EU, we should be declaring war against Turkey in conjunction with Russia and nuking them out of existence. Mushroom clouds over Istanbul, baby!
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Merkel should be hung, drawn and quartered.