BRUSSELS - The European Union (EU) finished an unusual marathon summit early Tuesday with Turkey, which is eager to obtain EU membership, resulting in a pending deal as the two sides bargained for a promising solution to the ongoing migration crisis.
Turkey needs to respond to the call from the EU as a candidate country, said the EU's foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini ahead of the summit on Monday. Ankara has viewed the summit as a good chance to accelerate its accession process to the bloc.
However, to the surprise of the EU, Turkey didn't intend to be obedient in this respect. Instead, it brought up new proposals at the summit.
Turkish Prime Minister AhmetDavutoglu not only asked the EU to provide an extra three billion euros (3.3 billion U.S. dollars) to help settle massive migrant flows, but also demanded visa-free travel to EU countries for the Turks.
The EU and Turkey last November came up with an action plan, aiming to stem the massive migrant flows with Brussels promising to distribute three billion euros to Ankara to provide assistance to the refugees.
Ankara was reported to have complained about the EU's slowness in allocating the money. Davutoglu was also reportedly urged by Turkish President RecepTayyipErdogan to "bring back the three billion euros."
By now, the European Parliament (EP) announced it would hold a debate on Wednesday on the conclusions of the EU-Turkey summit at a plenary session that lasts until Thursday. Yet the EU has decided to postpone the decision on the migration deal with Turkey until the next summit on March 17-18.(Xinhua)