MIGRATION TIMEBOMB: Europe braced for ‘UNCOUNTABLE influx’ as Turkey wins visa-free travel
EUROPE is facing a mass migration timebomb with a visa-free travel deal for Turkish citizens set to unleash an “uncountable influx” on the continent, a top German politician has warned.
By KATIE MANSFIELD
Express.co.uk
Tue, Mar 1, 2016
Officials in Brussels offered Turkey £2.3 billion and visa-free travel if it clamps down on the number of refugees making their way into Europe through its borders.
But today a prominent German politician warned EU leaders may have robbed Peter to pay Paul, shutting off one influx but opening up the continent to 80 million Turkish citizens.
Johannes Singhammer, vice-president of the Bundestag said there are “serious considerations” about the prospective visa-free regime, because it would open “a gateway for further immigration and a flow of refugees to Germany.”
He said that German consulates in Turkey are already issuing a staggering 200,000 visas a year for free travel in the Schengen zone and that number is now set to explode when the agreement comes into force in October.
Mr Singhammer said migrants from war-torn Syria or Iraq could add to the influx, but also migrants from Turkey itself, saying the domestic conflict with the Kurds “has a vast potential to create new reasons [for those persecuted] to flee.”
Tensions have escalated across Germany in the wake of the Cologne New Year’s Eve sex attacks which saw scores of women robbed and sexually assaulted by gangs of men, suspected to be migrants.
German chancellor Angela Merkel has come under fire for her so-called open door policy to refugees and has insisted the answer to the migrant crisis is not to simply close European borders.
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