Commentary: EU-Turkey deal risks premature failure if politics do not give way to pragmatism

While a new shipwreck in the Mediterranean leaving several hundred victims was announced by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees on Wednesday, Brussels and Ankara, beyond declarations of good intentions and sabre rattling, continue their political arm wrestling match.

If politics do not give way to pragmatism, the controversial agreement on the handling of the refugee crisis, hastily reached on March 18 between Turkey and European heads of state and government, risks premature failure.

The reactions following the Tuesday visits to the spring plenary session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) in Strasbourg by European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker and Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu indicate that the EU-Turkey agreement has already been compromised.

PACE members, in fact, largely expressed their doubts Wednesday during an urgent debate on the subject.

The address of Davutoglu, like that of Juncker the day prior, does not seem to have reassured them, and many are asking who will gain from this agreement.

"All the measures have been put in place," the Turkish PM affirmed, however.

"There is no problem," he stressed, while specifying: "Turkey could speak of difficulties because the 3 billion euros (3.41 billion U.S. dollars) set aside for the Syrian refugees arriving in Turkey are still not in our hands."

Meanwhile, the president of the European Commission pleaded "The European Commission has done everything in its power to bring assistance to the refugees. The agreement reached between the EU and Turkey makes up one part of the solution. The principle of non-refoulement will be respected."

The question of financing, like that of the liberalization of visas for Turkish citizens wishing to travel to the EU, and the acceleration of the EU adhesion process for Turkey, appear between the two camps but especially at the heart of the EU.

After the arrival of nearly a million migrants on the European continent and the apparition of barbed-wire fences on its soil as part of the re-establishment of internal border controls within the Schengen zone, Europe is waking up as if it were stunned.

Nationalisms and populisms, on the left as much as on the right, are flourishing on the terrain of disoriented public opinion.

The contested European political class, fractured by ideological divisions, is more and more delegitimized in a context of the economic crisis and social tension which have settled in for the long term.

The EU, in such conditions, does not seem to be in the best position for the ongoing geopolitical shakeup. Its member states have not been able to form a common front and have sometimes taken up antagonistic positions toward one another. The European executive is struggling to convince the parliamentarians, and all the more so the European citizens, of the soundness of the measures decided upon in the refugee crisis as in other concerns.

Beyond the EU-Turkey agreement, there is the whole issue of the relationship between Europe and its neighbors, that of the EU's identity, and also its place in the world in the 21st century -- on demographic, economic, geopolitical and cultural planes -- which are being called into question.

In one camp, as in the other, the management of the flow of migrants represents stakes which are far from the humanitarian reality of the thousands of refugees stuck in the Greek islands and of the two million others who currently find themselves in camps in Turkey.

On the humanitarian front, it is time to act. If not, there will be new victims in the sea to grieve, but also in refugee camps where living conditions are degrading day by day.

Only a global solution to the source of the refugee crisis can put an end to such tragedies. This would inevitably require the return of peace to the countries from which the migrants are fleeing. Endit