A total of €485 million will be allocated to support refugees in Turkey, as the European Parliament has approved the European Commission’s proposal presented on June 3.
The funding will permit the European Union to extend two flagship humanitarian programmes in Turkey until the end of 2021.
The Emergency Social Safety Net (ESSN) program will help more than 1,7 million refugees to meet their basic needs. In contrast, the education programme – Conditional Cash Transfers for Education (CCTE) enables over 600,000 refugee children to attend school, SchnegenVisaInfo.com reports.
Commissioner for Crisis Management, Janez Lenarčič said that the EU would support refugees in Turkey as long as the humanitarian needs persist.
“This new funding shows our deep concern for the most vulnerable, especially now that the coronavirus has further exacerbated their already dire situation. Thanks to the partnership between humanitarian organisations, the Turkish authorities and the EU, our humanitarian programmes help refugees to meet their basic needs and preserve their dignity,” Lenarčič pointed out.
There are more than 4 million refugees in Turkey. A total of 70 per cent of them are children and women. The vast majority of them live outside camps.
Syrians nationals make up the majority of the refugee population in Turkey.
“The funding announced today is additional to the EU Facility for Refugees in Turkey, which provided €2.4 billion for the humanitarian response in 2016-2019 out of a total of €6 billion. The ESSN and CCTE programmes were set up under the EU Facility for Refugees in Turkey in 2016 and 2017 respectively,” European Commission’s recent release reads.
In March, the Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said that the European Union would have to grant visa-free entry to Turkish passport holders if they want the migrant and refugee situation at the Turkish-Greek border resolved.
Cavusoglu stressed that visa freedom for Turkey must be implemented to resolve the refugee crisis in Europe.
