BERLIN (Sputnik) — On Monday, the Turkey-EU summit on migration took place in Brussels. Ankara pledged to take back all illegal migrants that had arrived to the European Union and send in their place legal Syrian refugees to the bloc on one-for-one basis in exchange for the acceleration of visa liberalization negotiations and EU accession talks.
"I am critical of the liberalization of the visa regime and the acceleration of negotiations on [Turkish] accession to the EU," Dobrindt told the German Augsburger Allgemeine newspaper.
The minister stressed that the liberalization has to be regulated by clear rules and restrictions.
"Otherwise, we will create conditions for a new wave of illegal migration," he added.
Europe has been beset by a massive refugee crisis, with hundreds of thousands of undocumented migrants fleeing their home countries in the Middle East and North Africa to escape violence and poverty. The EU border agency Frontex recorded over 1.83 million illegal border crossings in the European Union in 2015.
