 gyda'r Cymru yng Nghymru yn ffadu'r 15 mewn y Aber unpleasant i'r Tych. Oni, пethau o'r 18 o'r march, y Prifysg holdiwn i'r Wasgol Cymru rôl, a byddwn i'n bach i'n mynd i chi'n bach hynny y gwaith bod i'n ddechrau Homfroedd. Pa sy'n dim i'ch byddwch i'r Cymru ym mhairen i fynd ars-yf-redu'r ymgyllteithio cwm 천f. Felly, ond llwyddu arno eich cyfnwys arni, ac i gael am hefyd yn leidio mi herfyr y mhwymoedd yma, a'r hyn o'r cyfweld sydd gyda'r cyfweld ar y sea ac mae'n gyd wedi gwneud o'r mynedd yn ymlaen. Felly, y EU wedi gyd yn gweithio ddigonol i'r ffordd gyda Torfogol, ac mae'n ddechrau. Felly, yn ym 15 oed, y Maerthyn yn cyfweld grwp y Gymraedol am gweithio'r cyfweld a'r cyfweld ar y cyfweld a'r cyfweld yn gweithio'n cyfweld. Felly, byddwn i'n gwybod â'r hynny, He was EU mission chief for the Cyprus financial assistance programme, he was chairman of the Euro task force on co-ordinated action in 2010 and 2011, and he was appointed as deputy director general of the economic and financial affairs in the European Commission, so he has a very stellar CV behind this job that he's now doing. But this particular task that he's working on now is one that I think every country in the EU and outside are watching very closely because the whole issue of migration and the movement of people has really, you know, we are all engaged with it, whether we're not in politics, but if we're in business, whether we're in the NGO sector, everybody now is watching and being concerned. And now in more recent days with what's going on in the states as well with the new president and this whole issue of movement of people, freedom of peoples to move the legal imperatives attached to moving people from one place to another. That's all now very topical. So, Martin, I hate to tell you, but your job has got more and more, shall we say, worldwide each day. As I say, that treaty was signed and what we're going to hear today from our speaker is just a little bit about this treaty and how it is working. It's only a year really in place. It's not quite a year in place, but it has had some good successes and has helped Turkey and Greece very much because they were at the front lines of the large numbers. You referred already to the fact that on the 18th of March, at 2016, the EU and Turkey concluded a landmark political agreement. So here I need to make a small correction. It's not a treaty. It's a political agreement on the management of migration flows along the eastern Mediterranean route. And this political agreement was captured, as you all know, in the EU-Turkey statement. And this statement was as bold, one could say, as it was controversial. And according to the statement, the EU and Turkey had decided to end the irregular migration from Turkey to the EU. And this was bold indeed, considering that in the six months preceding the EU-Turkey statement, on average 4,000 migrants per day had made the risky passage from Turkey into the Greek islands and then onwards to other parts in the EU. The EU-Turkey statement envisaged that all new irregular migrants crossing from Turkey into the Greek islands as from 20 March 2016 would be returned to Turkey, while fully respecting, at the same time, EU and international law. In addition, it was agreed that for every Syrian that would be returned to Turkey from the Greek islands, another vulnerable Syrian would be resettled directly from Turkey to the EU. And in parallel, the EU would make available significant resources for support to refugees in Turkey. The EU and Turkey also agreed to accelerate the process towards visa liberalisation for Turkey's national, provided that all the benchmarks would be met. Now, as I said from the start, this statement was hugely controversial. While the statement clearly said that the applicable international European law would apply and that all asylum applications would be assessed on an individual basis, humanitarian organisations heavily criticised the intention to return migrants to Turkey. Others were mainly skeptical about the effectiveness of the deal and the operational feasibility of it, of the whole undertaking. And in this context, I remember very well, already on the 18th of March, the Financial Times, that this statement, the EU's impossible deal. And I had the good fortune to be appointed at the same day by President Juncker as the EU coordinator for the implementation of this impossible deal. Now, this presentation comes in three parts. First, I will spend a few minutes going back to the run-up to the deal and to some of the, I want to discuss some of the problems we engaged very early on in the implementation phase. After that, I will give an overview of the main impact of this agreement so far and I will conclude by addressing some of the remaining challenges. Now comes the tricky part. I want to start, yes. So, the run-up to the, the run-up and early implementation of the EU-Turkey statement. Now, in the first half of 2015, Greece overtook Italy as the first point of entry of migrants into the EU. From the summer onwards, literally thousands of migrants arrived on a daily basis on the Greek islands. From there, they continued their journey to other parts, so over the Western Balkan to other parts in Europe. The vast majority at that time were, of the migrants were, refugees fleeing from the wars in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. But in their sleepstream, also many migrants that were not in need of international protection entered the EU. By the end of 2015, more than one million migrants had entered the European Union, of which, according to Frontex, around 885,000 through the so-called Eastern Mediterranean route, so that is via Turkey, through Greece and then over the Western Balkan. Now, the passage from Turkey to Greece was far from risk-free. And many, many migrants lost their lives in their attempts to cross over to the Greek islands. And I'm sure you all remember this dreadful picture of this little boy lying on the beach in Bodrum. And this really became the image of the tragedy that was ongoing. But we should not forget that there were, like this little boy, there were literally a thousand people, a thousand people that lost their lives in the period from January or April 2015 to January 2016. So 1,064 people to be precise. Now Greece was clearly overwhelmed by the high number of arrivals. In September 2015, the total reception capacity in the whole of Greece, I mean by that accommodation for people to stay, was less than 2,000 places. There was hardly any capacity to register migrants. The responsible service for the first reception, so the so-called first reception service, was extremely small and completely overwhelmed. The Greek asylum service was still relatively small services that had only been established in 2011, albeit with, I have to say, capable management. But coordination between the various services, so between the police, between the asylum service, between the first reception service and other important services, was about weak, I would say, at best. On top of that, at that time, the newly elected Syriza government was fully consumed by exceptionally acrimonious discussions and negotiations with Greece's creditors and paid actually very, very little attention to what was happening on the migration file. And the result of all this was that very, very large groups of migrants entered Greece without being properly checked or registered. So to give an indication, in September 2015, only 8% of the arrivals in Greece were properly registered in what is called the Euro DAC system, so the European system for registration. The return programme that had been in existence before had completely broken down, so there were no people apprehended nor returned, and virtually every migrant, regardless of his or her country of origin, could essentially unchecked continuous journey over the Western Balkan. And this did not go unnoticed by the general public, first of all, in Greece, obviously, but also in other member states like Austria, Germany, Denmark, Sweden and the Netherlands, but essentially many, many member states. And very soon, serious pressure started to build up to tighten control over migration flows. And the refugee crisis was born. And to many commentators at that time that struck me because I had been heavily involved in the Euro crisis, but many commentators said at the time this crisis poses actually a larger risk to the future of the EU than the preceding Euro crisis now. I'm not sure whether it's true or not, but it tells you something about the mood at that time. Now, the initial response, the initial EU response aimed at better managing the migrant flows. So Greece and Italy were asked to create so-called hotspots to ensure adequate registration of people and to ensure a swift referral of arrivals into different follow-up processes. These countries were also asked to provide more and better reception capacity for hosting migrants, and in return other member states were asked to alleviate the burden on Greece and Italy by relocating notably Syrian and Iraqi refugees directly from Greece and Italy. Now, the Commission would facilitate all this by providing the necessary fund and also the technical support for implementation now. And this is how I got involved in all of this and with me also myself. So it was mentioned already, the structural reform support service. So by end of September 2015 I got the instruction from President Jupiter to support the Greek authorities in managing this crisis and I have to say this was not self-evident and I had not seen this coming because as an economist I had no prior experience whatsoever in the migration field. But I guess that due to the euro crisis I had some experience with crisis management and this might explain why this came to me. Now, despite many challenges and a lot of criticism, significant progress was made in the period between October 2015 and March 2016. So three out of the five planned hotspots were finished by March. The remaining two followed in a few weeks after. In parallel significant reception capacity was added and I will show later on a graph on this. The return program by that time had been restarted and also a start was made with the implementation of the relocation program. But despite the progress made the political tensions across Europe continued to rise. So notwithstanding all the important things that were happening in Greece and the problem was that even though all these measures that were taken were necessary they did not directly address the main concerns of the general public and the main concern of the general public whether we like it or not was simply the sheer number of migrants that arrived in a very short period of time. And under the influence of public opinion member states were increasingly resorting to unilateral actions to limit the inflow of migrants into their territory. So the Germans introduced temporary controls on its border with Austria. Austria introduced controls on its border with Hungary. Hungary ffaenstawf its border with Croatia. Sweden introduced controls on this border with Denmark. Slovenia began building a wall or building a barrier along its border with Croatia etc etc. And literally in a matter of weeks the freedom of movement in the EU and one of the fundamental pillars under the whole EU project had come on a very serious threat. Antimigrant movements were gaining ground very rapidly in many member states. Now further in early May or as a result of this or as part of this in early May or early March the Balkan countries significantly tightened the flow of migrants over the western Balkan route. And as migrants continued to arrive in still large numbers to Greece even after the closure of the Northern border there was a very rapid accumulation of migrants who got stuck at the Northern border. And well you might remember the pictures of Idomeni where at some point in time 13,000 migrants were stuck in these conditions on the border. Now it's very important to say here this was not because of the EU-Turkey agreement quite the contrary this was because of the fact that still people were coming into Greece while the Northern border was closed already. Now so this is the backdrop to this EU-Turkey statement and it was the backdrop against which this deal was negotiated. And I believe it's very important to keep this in mind when assessing the merits of this deal. Okay turning to the next part and that is the EU-Turkey statement of the coming into being of the EU-Turkey statement the first challenges and the impacts. Now at the time of the implementation of the statement this deal was seen by many as just a very big logistical operation. So if you go back to all the commentaries at the time it was always about the logistics of this and how challenging that would be. Now I would argue that while the logistics of this were certainly not easy the biggest challenges actually were and are of a legal nature. So a central assumption underlying the EU-Turkey statement was the idea that under certain conditions Turkey could be considered as a safe third country for refugees but this is a legal concept. And in order for the Greek Asylum Service to be able to apply this concept changes in the legal framework of both Greece and Turkey were necessary. So the first week after the start of the agreement we actually spent a lot of time on negotiating required changes and also additional guarantees with Turkey while in parallel preparing the necessary legislation in Greece. Even with the necessary safeguards and legal changes in place the final assessment of whether or not Turkey can be considered a safe third country for a particular refugee is in the end for the court to make. And at present the situation is that we are still waiting for the outcome of a second appeal and last appeal on the case of two Syrians which is currently at the State Council which is the highest administrative court in Greece. Now a second immediate challenge was created by the very strong reaction of humanitarian organisations. So until the 18th of March 2016 humanitarian organisations were playing a key role in the provision of services like food, cleaning, medical service in the hotspots. But in reaction to the statement these organisations decided overnight to walk out to drop the provision of the service because they said we cannot be part of this agreement. Now instead they started to focus their collective attention on advising migrants to ask for asylum. So that was happening back then. Now I believe an immediate catastrophe and I would say also an immediate end to the EU-Turkey statement was avoided because we managed just in time with the Hellenic Army to ensure that there was food, medical services and cleaning services in the camps. So we managed to provide them the funding and they managed to get it organised just in time. Now the information campaign of the humanitarian organisations certainly had the desired effect. So in a matter of days all the migrants that were on the island they had asked for asylum. Now I need to be very clear on this. We totally stand by the fact that every migrant needs to have access and needs to have the opportunity to ask for asylum. But it did have a practical consequence which probably was not intended. What happened was that not only migrants with a true refugee background asked for asylum. So the people from Syria, from Iraq, from Afghanistan. But also all other migrants that did not have a refugee background and which I think objectively made the challenge to cater for the real refugees in the camps a whole lot more difficult. Now I think fortunately now the situation with humanitarian organisations has improved. They have also come back to maybe not all of them but quite a few of them. But certainly in the beginning this was difficult. Now a third immediate challenge was to build up very rapidly the necessary asylum processing capacity in the islands. On 18 March 2016 there was virtually no presence of the Greek asylum service or EAS on the Greek islands. And if I say virtually I think there were two or three people. In fact there was not even office space for them to work. So this all had to be created from scratch. In parallel new appeal committees had to be created to deal with the many appeals that were to be expected and indeed later came. And in parallel we were organising in Turkey the arrangements for the new resettlement programme. And other colleagues of mine were working on getting the projects funded to help the refugees in Turkey. So I think it's fair to say that quite a lot was going on in these weeks just after the statement came into effect. Now even though there remains a lot to be done and I will speak about that later many things did come together since or in the past 10 months. So the legal frameworks I talked about have been modified. The asylum service supported by EASO is now operating in all islands. New appeal committees have been created, returned protocols were negotiated with Turkey. Relocation and resettlement programmes have been established and are functioning. And a lot of additional reception capacity has been created. And contrary to the prediction of many the EU Turkey deal is still holding. So here you can see the development of the total reception capacity. So this one starts in October if you would go one month back you would see it was in September at a level of 2000. And we are now above 70,000 in total capacity in the whole of Greece. So the EU Turkey deal has had a profound impact on the number of arrivals in Greece. So whereas in the period September 2015 to March 2016 on average 4,000 per day arrived. This number has dropped to 85 per day since. And in cumulative terms the impact has been very significant. In the 10 months before the statement came into effect 960,000 people might have survived to the Greek islands. And I was just told that this is about the size of Dublin in the 10 months after only 26,000. So it's a difference of more than 930,000 persons or a drop of 97,97%. And this is my favourite chart I have to say. Now the arrangement has had an equally profound impact on the loss of life in the EGN. So in the 10 months period from April 2015 to January 2016, so the 10 months before the statement came into effect 1064 persons were reported dead or missing. In the same 10 months period April 2016 to January 2017, so after the statement 69 people were reported dead or missing. So a difference of nearly 1000 people. Now at this point I need to emphasise that there is very little, if any, sign of re-routing of migrants from the eastern Mediterranean route to the central Mediterranean route. There are many people saying very easily, number of deaths have been reduced in the GN, but you have now more on the route to Italy. Now it's correct that more people have lost their lives on the route from Libya to Italy this year. But if you look at the figures it's very clear that that has happened independent of what has happened on the eastern Mediterranean route. First of all, as I've mentioned, the drop in arrivals on the eastern Mediterranean route is more than 900,000, whereas the increase in arrivals on the central Mediterranean route is about 26,000. So it's very clear that it's not, only already if you look at the numbers you don't see a shift. More importantly is if you look at the composition of the migrant flows. And it's very clear that the migrants that come through the central Mediterranean route are primarily from the African continent and still are. There's no difference and we have seen no differences in composition, whereas the migrants arriving through the eastern Mediterranean route, they come from the Middle East and Asia. So we have not seen now all of a sudden Syrians or Pakistan or finding their way to Libya. It's just not what is happening. After a slow start a considerable progress has been made in the processing of asylum claims. So by now 12,000 asylum applications have been formally lodged. Around 8,600 first instance decisions have been taken on the islands with support of IAZO. Now around 2,600 people have appealed against that decision. And in around 1,100 cases the appeal authority has taken a final decision. Now returns to Turkey have started albeit at a relatively low level. The number of returns to Turkey since 21 March last year standard close to 1,300 now. So 1,290 as of yesterday. Well this number while not insignificant falls clearly short of expectations. Well at first the main reason for this was the lack of administer of capacity, asylum processing capacity on the island. More recently the main bottleneck has shifted further to the capacity of the appeal authorities. We're working on that, it's expanding and the last bottleneck is on the capacity to actually return people. And it's not nice to say but this is what is missing is a lack of pre-removal facilities on the island. Which makes it very hard in practice to even people that have received a double negative decision for the police to find them and to return them. So this is, now that brings me to the remaining challenges and the next step. Now even though, and I think it's clear from what I have said, even though a lot has been achieved I think. Particularly if you take into account the very challenging situation, ever changing situation. It's also very clear that this is no time to relax. And there are still plenty of difficulties that need to be solved. More generally migration pressure is likely to stay. It's not something that with a quick fix is solved. So it will require attention and management for the years to come. Now the most pressing problems, at least for me on my little corner, relate to the current situation in the Greek islands, which is difficult. So I talked already about the low rate of returns from the islands to Turkey. And this has led to pressure on the already stretched reception capacity in the islands. And migrants as well as local population on the islands have grown increasingly frustrating, frustrating resulting in increasing tensions on both sides which really make also the management of all of this a lot more difficult. It has important ramifications both on the asylum process itself we have seen, not lately but certainly in the last months of 2016. Frequent interruptions of the asylum process because of incidents, riots in the camp. And it has also had a very unfavorable impact on the conditions under which migrants are living in the islands. And on top of that the willingness, it has had a negative impact on the willingness of local population to actually help to improve the situation. And it's important to stress here that you probably have seen pictures also from Moria, people sitting in summer tents while it was snowing. Now the issue here is not that there is no funding available or no people prepared to do whatever it takes to make things better to solve the issue. The problem is simply a lack of space. And the lack of space can only be solved while either by speeding up the asylum processes further and getting people from the island more quickly, or by getting from the islands an area where you can either build accommodation or the possibility to bring people to hotels. And that because of the extensions in the islands has not been coming forward and has proved to be extremely difficult. So, and this is not, and I want to stress it, I mean it's not to point fingers to any one of the party because it's understandable that also people on the islands are also frustrated. They are really at the front line of what is happening. So it's just to say that all these things hang together and in order to get real improvement we need to work on all aspects. So that is exactly what we are trying to do. So additional efforts are needed to put the EU Turkey statement on a more solid footing. And to this end Minister Mousales or the Minister of Migration of Greece and myself, we have detailed an action plan which was endorsed by the European Council in December. And it's quite detailed actually, you may want to look it up or I can send it. But I'm not going to go over all the details. But key actions include increasing the resources deployed to the islands for asylum. So simply put more case workers to speed up procedures, increasing the capacity at the appeal stage which we have since already doubled the number of appeal committees. A measures to improve coordination and security. We're funding through Frontex more police. We have finally also coordinators from the Greek side on the island which were not there. Now ensuring more efficient return operations. So I mentioned the need for more pre-removal capacity just as an example. But at the same time we're also increasing now the assisted voluntary returns program from the island with more generous terms in the hope that in particular those that are not in need of international protection choose the option to go back to the country of origin. And also last but not least ensuring better reception facilities in the islands and accelerating the relocations. Now the overall aim of this plan is to eliminate the backlog on the islands before the summer season starts. I believe this is possible. We were working hard on that but it will only work if all actors do their part. So that's us, EU agencies, Greek authorities but it's also the member states that for example still need to deliver on member states experts to help the Greek asylum service or more member states experts. And also a need to relocate people directly from Greece to their country to alleviate the burden on Greece. Now this brings me to the end of this presentation. Ten months after the EU turkey statement came into effect I think we can say that the statement is delivering on its key objectives. So that's putting an end to the irregular migration from Turkey to Greece. And well it's putting an end to the loss of life in EGN or at least significantly reducing the loss of life in the EGNC. Now even so the deal is still as controversial today as it was in the beginning. And I would say this is understandable because no matter how you look at the deal and I've provided you with some context but no matter how you look at the deal it does mark a shift in policy of the EU in the direction to what proponents would call a more realist approach to the situation from a more idealistic approach. And you can have different views on that so I understand that. I personally would argue that with all the criticism that one can have on this considering the circumstances this was probably the least bad option of all the options that were on the table. I would say that without this agreement the political situation in many member states would have become untenable with also potentially serious consequences. Moreover as I mentioned before the northern border was already closed so if we had not managed to reduce the inflow into Greece then we would have had to face a really serious humanitarian situation in Greece which is not very well placed to do with this. Now this does not relieve us in any way from our moral responsibility towards those that are fleeing from wars and persecution. First and foremost this means that each and every migrant that has a right to apply for asylum to have his claim assessed on an individual basis and that he has or he or she has a right to appeal a decision if he or she does. I do not agree with this and this is what is happening in practice and this is actually the main explanation why returns to Turkey are still relatively at the low level. Now it also means that we need to contribute to the well-being of refugees that now remain in Turkey or elsewhere in other countries. This is part and parcel for a good reason of this deal. So far 2.2 billion has been allocated to projects supporting refugees in Turkey and I believe around 700 million has been actually dispersed until today and with this money Syrian families get access to healthcare, cash benefits and education. Last but not least we should provide for the migrants in Greece while they are waiting for their claims to be examined in a human way. All in all we have by now made available 1 billion in EU funds for this purpose. We will continue to work closely with the authorities to improve the situation of the migrants in Greece while in parallel ensuring the continued implementation of the EU-Turkey statement.