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Dutch PM to meet Davutoglu on migrant crisis

05 February 2016, 20:27 CET
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(THE HAGUE) - Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte will meet his Turkish counterpart Ahmet Davutoglu next week seeking to firm up plans to tackle Europe's worst migration crisis since World War II.

"I believe that only through a combined effort between Turkey and Europe will we be able to ensure the refugee situation in Turkey will improve," Rutte told journalists Friday after his weekly cabinet meeting.

Rutte and Davutoglu will meet on Wednesday in The Hague, two days after German Chancellor Angela Merkel travels to Ankara on a similar mission to discuss the "further implementation of the EU-Turkey action plan".

Under that November deal, Ankara agreed to lower the number of migrants coming into EU countries via its territory, but between 2,000 and 3,000 people are still arriving daily in Greece from Turkey.

The European Union on Wednesday finally reached agreement on how to finance a three-billion-euro ($3.3-billion) deal to aid Syrian refugees in Turkey, in exchange for Ankara's help in stemming the flow of migrants.

Wednesday's talks will come after some Dutch politicians floated a plan to repatriate migrants back to Turkey via ferryboat as soon as they arrive on the Greek islands, where they would be handled under a UN process for dealing with asylum-seekers.

Rutte, whose country currently holds the rotating EU presidency, however would not be drawn on the unpublished and controversial plan, saying it was "one of many options under consideration."

Turkey will take on more refugees but "it's important to realise that we need to help (Turkey)," said Rutte.

Apart from financial aid, "we also have to be willing to bring people from Turkey to Europe," where they will be sheltered and distributed fairly among countries, Rutte said.

This however should take place "in an orderly fashion, not with people coming as boat refugees in the hands of human traffickers," he said.

The Netherlands in November said it would double the number of beds and shelters for tens of thousands of asylum-seekers.

Last year the country of 17 million people took in a record number of around 60,000 asylum-seekers, most of them from war-torn Syria.


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