Education, health remain EU’s priority in helping Syrian refugees in Turkey: Envoy

The European Union's preferred areas in lending the millions of Syrian refugees a helping hand will continue to be education and health, the EU's envoy to Turkey has said, as European leaders will discuss how to continue cooperation with Turkey at a summit on March 25 and 26.

In an interview with the Hürriyet Daily News during his two-day trip to the border town of Hatay, the head of the EU Delegation in Turkey Ambassador Nikolaus Meyer-Landrut outlined the performance of the migrant deal between the two sides since March 2016.

How do you evaluate the fact that Turkey is hosting four million refugees and the performance of the ongoing Turkish-EU migrant cooperation on the 10th year of the Syrian crisis and fifth year of the migrant deal?

Turkey, its government, its municipalities - as we have seen in Hatay and other places - but also the Turkish people are making a really remarkable and extraordinary effort to host such a huge refugee population which is right now the biggest refugee population any country is hosting. And this puts of course on the state and the people a burden which is not easy to shoulder. This is where the EU is contributing. But it is just a contribution, the biggest part of the burden is, of course, carried by Turkey.

How would you assess the impact of the Turkish-EU deal?

First of all, this deal has saved many, many lives. Because much fewer people have ventured the very dangerous journey from the Turkish mainland to the Greek islands. Secondly, the cooperation in terms of relocation, migration management - with some difficulties - have produced some positive results. Even if now, under the pandemic, some of these obligations have not been able to be fully implemented as...