Turkey's Erdogan says no migrant deal if EU doesn't fulfill pledges

Separately, the Commission also rolled out on Wednesday a number of technical proposals to strengthen the bloc's external borders in an attempt to tackle both the migrant influx and security threats following deadly attacks in Paris and Brussels.

Once Greece and Turkey take additional legal steps to allow the return of asylum seekers, the other part of the agreement will go into full effect to allow one Syrian refugee in Turkey to be flown to Europe for every Syrian who is deported from Greece.

Under the rules refugees should claim asylum in the country they arrive in.

But critics have slammed this system as obsolete and unfair to Greece and Italy, where most of the 1.25 million Syrian, Iraqi, Afghan and other migrants entered the bloc previous year.

The European Union launched a drive on April 6th to overhaul the EU's asylum rules to more fairly share responsibility for an unprecedented influx of migrants despite resistance within the 28-nation bloc, informs AFP/LETA.

Today, official recommendations from the EU Commission were revealed showing how bureaucrats want to bring skilled migrants through borders, whilst making member states take set amounts of people.

Czech Interior Minister Milan Chovanec responded on Twitter: "The proposal for reform of the European migration policy is based again on implementing compulsory quotas".

Rajoy said that "refugees will not have to risk their lives to come to Europe", adding that a legal path to Europe was guaranteed and allowed the refugees to avoid being victims of human trafficking.

Davutoglu spoke Wednesday at a joint news conference with his Finnish counterpart, Juha Sipila, in Helsinki.

Amnesty International has accused Turkey of illegally returning Syrians to their homeland, something Turkey denies.

The organization alleged Turkey has been expelling Syrian groups of around 100 men, women and children on an nearly daily basis since mid-January. He also complained about protesting refugees blocking the rail freight link with neighboring Macedonia and occasional closures of nearby roads.

Lesbos has been named by the Orthodox church as the destination for the church leaders, and Joanna Kakissis, reporting for NPR from Athens, says it's a logical destination: it's where hundreds of thousands of migrants and refugees arrived a year ago, and where many of those now facing deportation are located.

Dozens shouted at police and sat on the dock chanting "open the borders".

Kyritsis told Greek state TV more people could be returned later this week.

However, several countries do not want to see wholesale changes to the system. These would either create a "corrective fairness mechanism" to relocate asylum seekers from frontline states to elsewhere in the European Union; or establish a new system that would ignore where people arrived and send them around the European Union according to a "permanent distribution key".

The Commission presents its proposals later Wednesday.

Member states have further exacerbated the problem by encouraging "irregular secondary movements" - when refugees travel to another country from their first point of origin.

A local psychologist said at the time it was not surprising that refugees and migrants would apparently rather choose death than face a future in the Middle East. Officials have reported that the number of people trying to cross the Aegean Sea has slowed considerably since the deal was struck with Turkey on March 18.

Marriott-Starwood merger back on as Anbang drops $14bn offerBehind the scenes, Starwood this week was likely asking Anbang to agree to a breakup fee as part of a definitive agreement . In addition to the Marriott name, the company's 4,000-plus hotels include the Ritz-Carlton, Bulgari, Protea and Moxy names.

Source: Turkey's Erdogan says no migrant deal if EU doesn't fulfill pledges