Greece will continue to stress importance of full implementation of EU-Turkey Joint Statement, Koumoutsakos says

Following Tuesday’s statements by Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, Greece's Alternate Minister for Citizen Protection George Koumoutsakos, responding to relevant questions by journalists, made the following statement:

“The recent statements by Turkish Foreign Minister Mr. Cavusoglu regarding a unilateral non-implementation of the 2014 readmission agreement between the EU and Turkey, as long as there is no visa liberalisation for Turkish citizens by the European Union, constitute a repetition of the well-known positions and decisions made by Turkey from 2017 onwards.

These statements by the Turkish Foreign Minister do not regard the implementation of the EU-Turkey Joint Statement from March 2016.

In this context, during the informal EU Council of Ministers responsible for Home Affairs and Migration Policy in Helsinki, which took place last week, as well as the informal meeting hosted by France with the participation of Ministers of Foreign Affairs and Interior of the EU member-states in Paris last Monday, I underlined that Europe has to remain vigilant, stressing in parallel the critical dimension of the increase of migrant flows in the Eastern Mediterranean."