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Police in northern Greece move more than 400 Syrians and Iraqis by bus from a makeshift camp near the Macedonian border to a shelter near the northern city of Thessaloniki. More than 50,000 migrants remain stranded in Greece following European border closures, and the European Union's agreement with Turkey.
2016-06-13

The European Union proposes visa-free travel for Turkish citizens within Europe's Schengen Area and invites member states and EU lawmakers to endorse the move by June 30. The EU says Turkey has met all but five of the 72 criteria included in the agreement in exchange for its efforts to stop asylum seekers from reaching Europe. This visa deal also needs approval from the European Parliament.
2016-05-4

Turkey says it has deported more than 3,300 foreigners suspected of links to jihadi groups, and barred another 41,000 foreigners from entering the country.
2016-04-25

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, European Council President Donald Tusk, and European Commission Vice-President Frans Timmermans meet with Syrian refugees at a camp in the southeastern Turkish town of Nizip prior to talks with a delegation led by Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu. Davutoğlu stresses the importance of implementation of European Union visa liberalization for Turkish citizens in assuring the success of Europe's migrant readmission agreement with his country. Tusk announces that the EU will spend 1 billion euros ($1.1 billion) this summer on projects to improve the lives of Syrian migrants.
2016-04-23

European Union and Turkish officials agree on how to handle the flood of refugees. The deal, to return irregular migrants to Turkey, includes acceleration of the country's long-stalled bid for membership in the union; billions of euros in extra aid, 3 billion euros now, another 3 billion by 2018; and, visa-free travel for Turks once the country satisfies the EU criteria. Europe will be taking in thousands of Syrian refugees directly from Turkey. Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) strongly condemns the deal as "ugly and illegal." The agreement is set to go into effect Sunday, March 20, 2016.
2016-03-18

The European Union and Turkey agree on broad principles for a plan to ease the migration crisis which includes returning thousands of migrants to Turkey. For this, the EU will swiftly ease visa requirements for Turks and speed up Ankara's EU accession talks. A final agreement is to be ready for next week's two-day EU summit in Brussels, Belgium.
2016-03-8

The Greek coast guard and the European Union border agency Frontex, in six separate operations, rescue a total of 383 migrants attempting to sail from Turkey to the eastern Greek islands.
2015-11-7

Greek prime minister Alexis Tsipras lashes out at European "ineptness" in handling the continent's massive immigration crisis. The Associated Press reports 31 more people — mostly children — drowned in shipwrecks in the Mediterranean Sea near the islands of Kalymnos and Rhodes. Turkey's state-run agency says four children drowned and two others are missing after two new accidents with boats headed to Greece's Lesbos and Samos islands. The death toll in the Aegean Sea over the past three days is at least 50. The Greek coast guard says they rescued 600 people in the past 24 hours, while thousands more made it safely from Turkey to Greece's southeastern islands.
2015-10-30

Eleven European and Balkan leaders meet about the migrant crisis at an emergency summit in Brussels, Belgium; Turkey did not attend. The Prime Minister of Slovenia says the EU will ‘start falling apart’ within weeks if the migrant crisis continues unchecked. Huge divisions remain among EU states over how to deal with the influx of hundreds of thousands of migrants.
2015-10-25