{"id":10028,"date":"2021-03-16T09:00:04","date_gmt":"2021-03-16T06:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rsaegean.org\/?p=10028"},"modified":"2025-07-02T15:37:33","modified_gmt":"2025-07-02T12:37:33","slug":"eu-turkey-deal-5-years-of-shame-rule-of-law-capture-by-a-statement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rsaegean.org\/en\/eu-turkey-deal-5-years-of-shame-rule-of-law-capture-by-a-statement\/","title":{"rendered":"Rule of law capture by a Statement | EU-Turkey deal: 5 Years of Shame"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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From its very inception in early March 2016, the EU-Turkey deal signed on 18 March 2016 was immediately seen for what it was: \u201cThe EU is\u2026 outsourcing its responsibilities to protect refugees to Turkey, an immoral move which allows it to circumvent its obligations under international and European asylum and human rights law. Trading in people is the dehumanising expression of a failed European asylum policy and of the lack of solidarity within the EU.\u201d[1] The deal was falsely presented by EU leadership as a measure \u201cto offer migrants an alternative to putting their lives at risk\u201d[2] and not as a wish on the part of the EU to block departures of people from Turkey, regardless of their need for protection.[3]

The delivery of the deal over the past five years has come at an unspeakable cost for those seeking refuge in Europe, for local communities on the Greek islands and for the continent\u2019s moral standing. It has also driven a consistent, EU-sponsored dismantlement of legal standards at Greek and EU level that has led to a capture of fundamental safeguards enshrined in the rule of law by the short-term, narrowly conceived political aim of preventing people from reaching the EU. The steady destruction of those safeguards reflects a critical contribution of EU institutions and national governments to \u201crule of law backsliding\u201d in the continent.<\/p>

This Legal Note by Refugee Support Aegean (RSA) and Stiftung PRO ASYL recalls and analyses the full extent of the damaging rule of law repercussions of the EU-Turkey deal from 2016 to present, through successive restrictive legislative reforms in Greece, regular use of the islands for experimentation in asylum procedures, and evasion of legal scrutiny of the deal through its construction as a \u201cStatement\u201d.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Notes<\/strong><\/p>[1] \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 European Council on Refugees and Exiles (ECRE), \u2018EU-Turkey deal: trading in people and outsourcing the EU\u2019s responsibilities\u2019, 8 March 2016, available at:\u00a0https:\/\/bit.ly\/3aTCY9Q<\/a>.<\/p>[2] \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 European Council,\u00a0EU-Turkey Statement, 18 March 2016, available at:\u00a0https:\/\/bit.ly\/3dN84ll<\/a>.<\/p>[3] \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 ECRE, \u2018Weekly Editorial: EU-Turkey \u2013 Deconstructing the deal behind the statement\u2019, 16 March 2018, available at:\u00a0https:\/\/bit.ly\/3st4Irz<\/a>.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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\n\t\t\t\t\t\tRead the full story\t\t\t\t\t<\/h2>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tEU-Turkey \u201cdeal\u201d: Five years of Shame \t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
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Download theLegal Note From its very inception in early March 2016, the EU-Turkey deal signed on 18 March 2016 was…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":10034,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,138,10,274,343,146,137],"tags":[275,18,157],"class_list":{"0":"post-10028","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-publications","8":"category-eu-turkey-statement","9":"category-legal-and-case-analysis","10":"category-quality-of-the-asylum-procedure","11":"category-rule-of-law-in-greece","12":"category-stop-the-toxic-deal-2","13":"category-topics","14":"tag-2021-2","15":"tag-featured","16":"tag-stopthetoxicdeal"},"menu_order":0,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rsaegean.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10028","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rsaegean.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rsaegean.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rsaegean.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rsaegean.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10028"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/rsaegean.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10028\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10451,"href":"https:\/\/rsaegean.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10028\/revisions\/10451"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rsaegean.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10034"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rsaegean.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10028"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rsaegean.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10028"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rsaegean.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10028"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}