Last night, Professor Cathryn Costello appeared on the BBC’s Newsnight programme, contributing to a discussion of the new EU-Turkey plan to address the refugee and migrant crisis in Europe. In this plan, if finalised, Turkey will take back all new irregular migrants crossing to Greece from Turkey, and for every Syrian returned, a Syrian from a refugee camp in Turkey will be resettled in the EU.
Commenting on the legality of the proposed plan, Professor Costello stated:
“It’s very difficult to do blanket-based returns of people on grounds of their nationality without looking at their claims individually. I think it’s almost inevitable that those returns will be challenged. Individuals in Greece will be able to access Greek courts, they can make urgent applications to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, and there are basic and unavoidable principles of international law like non-refoulement which means that the consequences of return in each individual case have to be examined.”