Turkey and the European Union say they have agreed on key points of a "bold" proposal to help resolve the migrant crisis, aimed at deterring migrants from attempting the perilous journey to Europe.
Under the proposed deal, Ankara would agree to take back all migrants who leave Turkey's shores for Europe in the future, including those intercepted in its territorial waters, on the condition that one legitimate Syrian refugee is resettled in Europe for every Syrian returned to Turkey.
But international humanitarian organizations have harshly criticized parts of the agreement, with a senior official from the U.N. refugee agency saying Tuesday that sending back refugees en masse would not be "consistent with European law."
"An agreement that would be tantamount to a blanket return to a third country is not consistent with European law, not consistent with international law," Vincent Cochetel, Europe regional director of the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, told reporters in Geneva, Switzerland.
Tusk: Irregular migration into Europe is 'over'
The EU-Turkey plan, which still requires details to be hammered out before it is sent for approval by EU leaders in nine days, would also see the EU provide Turkey with billions in additional funding to provide for refugees, speed up talks on Turkey joining the EU, and accelerate the lifting of visa requirements for Turkish citizens in Europe.
"The days of irregular migration to the European Union are over," said Donald Tusk, president of the European Council -- as the group of 28 EU leaders is known -- at the end of Monday's emergency summit in Brussels, Belgium.
He said Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu had "confirmed Turkey's commitment to accept the rapid return of all migrants coming from Turkey to Greece that are not in need of international protection."
"The EU will support Greece in ensuring comprehensive, large scale and fast-track returns to Turkey," Tusk said.
A statement from EU heads of government released at the end of the summit said they agreed that "bold moves were needed" to break the business model of the smugglers, highlighting the importance of a NATO anti-trafficking mission in the Aegean Sea that has just expanded into Greek and Turkish territorial waters.
"We need to break the link between getting in a boat and getting settlement in Europe," read the statement.
Davutoglu said that his country, which hosts more Syrian refugees than any other, was motivated to enter into the arrangement primarily out of humanitarian concern.
"We don't want to see women and children dying in the Aegean Sea," he told reporters, according to Turkey's semiofficial Anadolu news agency.
Balkans migration route 'closed'
European leaders have been grappling with the biggest refugee crisis since World War II, with more than a million people fleeing conflict and poverty in the Middle East and elsewhere having entered EU territory since the start of 2015. Most of the migrant flow is from Syria, where the civil war has created more than 4 million refugees and displaced a further 6 million within the country.
The majority have come by using trafficking networks to cross the Aegean Sea, which separates Turkey and Greece, before heading overland through the Balkans to Germany and other northern European destination countries.
The crossing is dangerous, with more than 400 migrants having died making the journey so far this year, according to the International Organization for Migration.
Recently, a number of countries along the Balkan migration route agreed to all but close their borders, leaving a growing bottleneck of desperate migrants stranded in Greece, a country already struggling with a debt crisis.
More than 11,000 people are stuck in a backlog at Idomeni on the Greece-Macedonia border, in a transit camp designed for 1,500, according to Doctors Without Borders.
Tusk confirmed at the end of Monday's summit that EU leaders had decided to "end the 'wave-through approach'" through countries along the overland route to Western Europe.
"Irregular flows of migrants along the Western Balkans route have now come to an end," the EU heads of government said in a joint statement.
Underlining the fact that this route is now closing, Serbia closed its southern borders -- with Macedonia and Bulgaria -- at midnight local time (6:00 p.m. ET).
Serbia had been informed by Croatia that another EU member farther north on the Balkan route, Slovenia, would begin implementing the entry regime into the Schengen zone from midnight, and that it will not receive migrants without valid visas and passports, which effectively closes the "Balkan route."
"Taking into account the new regime, which was implemented by a member of the European Union, Serbia cannot afford to become a collection center for refugees, so it will consolidate all measures with the European Union, and reciprocally apply them in its southern and eastern borders with Macedonia and Bulgaria," Serbia's Ministry of Internal Affairs told CNN in an email.
Those with no visas 'cannot enter the Schengen area'
Source: Rights groups slam EU-Turkey migrant plan
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