At their summit in Bulgaria, the EU and Turkey reiterated their criticism of each other, but also tried to put a positive face on the meeting despite its apparent lack of results.
European Council president Donald Tusk told a press conference at the end of the EU-Turkey summit on Monday evening that cooperation with Turkey would continue but problems remain in the strained relationship.
“We share strategic geopolitical goals with Turkey. But if you ask me if we reached any concrete compromises tonight on the means to reach those goals – my answer is no,” Tusk said.
He was speaking after meeting EU Commission head Jean-Claude Juncker, Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borissov and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan at the heavily-guarded former royal summer residence of Evksinograd near Varna on the Black Sea coast.
After a series of bilateral and multilateral meetings that lasted more than six hours on Monday afternoon, the four men could barely hide their mixed feelings at the press conference.
On the European side, all three leaders tried to maintain a positive tone towards Ankara, although there was overt criticism, especially from Juncker, on the topic of human rights and upholding democratic norms in Turkey after the crackdown which has continued since the failed coup in 2016.
All three European leaders praised the positive role that Turkey has played in the refugee crisis, taking over in several million Syrians and housing them in camps, thus alleviating the flow towards the EU.
“We have zero pressure on our border because of Erdogan. I hope Bulgarians value this, because we remember how we were under pressure from the migrant wave in the past,” Borissov said.
Juncker and Erdogan however disagreed over the issue of the three billion euros that Brussels agreed to pay to Ankara for humanitarian activities in the Turkish refugee camps.
Last week Erdogan claimed the EU is not paying its dues. Juncker responded that all the money has either been transferred or contracted, and that a second instalment of three billion euros has been agreed by the EU for the coming years.
However Erdogan insisted at the summit that “bureaucratic hurdles” have been postponing payments, and that the humanitarian crisis can’t wait.
Erdogan also attacked unnamed “strategic partners” from the EU who he claimed had funded and armed his enemies in the Syrian region of Afrin, which Turkey and its Syrian allies seized from the Kurdish YPG militia, which Ankara regards as a terrorist group.
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