Last chance for the EU-Turkey migrant deal to work, says Gerald Knaus

The author of the March 2016 deal on migration between the European Union and Turkey says this may be its last chance for the agreement to work. Gerald Knaus, founding chairman of the European Stability Initiative (ESI) think tank, which advises EU member-states and is also in a continuous dialogue with the governments of Greece, Germany and Turkey, spoke to Kathimerini recently, just a few days before the government in Athens announced a series of measures to tackle the fresh upsurge in arrivals.

In an assessment of the deal last spring, three years after it went into effect, you said that just 6 percent of the Syrians who came to Greece fit the profile of those who could be returned to Turkey. Can you elaborate?

The Greek mechanism defined an incredible number of Syrians as "vulnerable" (68 percent, with the majority of them being diagnosed as...