The European countries criticizing Turkey with regard to the migrant crisis have not been able to do as much as Turkey has, Swiss parliamentarian Doris Fiala asserted at a plenary session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) on Wednesday.
"We could not be as successful as Turkey. It has done many significant things for migrants. Those who criticize Turkey here could not achieve similar things in their own countries," Fiala told a session of the Council of Europe discussing the recent deal between Turkey and the European Union.
Underscoring that Turkey has done great things in handling the migrant crisis, Fiala said Europe should show respect. "Europe has not had even tiny success in sharing the burden [of the crisis]," she said. Austrian parliamentarian Stefan Schennach also slammed EU member states for failures in handling the crisis. "The issue of migrants marks a complete failure of Europe. European countries cannot host incoming migrants, while not even 10 percent of those who've fled Syria came to Europe," he said. The 28-nation EU bloc has struggled to deal with the flow of migrants into the Schengen zone. Before signing a deal with Turkey to curb the flow, the union was overwhelmed by the influx. The influx of migrants has been curbed remarkably since the recent Turkey-EU deal.
