The EU cohesion depends on the progress of the management of the refugees issue, stressed President of Hellenic Republic Prokopis Pavlopoulos during his meeting on Monday with European Commissioner for Migration Dimitris Avramopoulos.

“About 3 million refugees are currently at the Turkish coasts and another 500,000 at the African coasts waiting from the traffickers to take them to Europe,” Mr. Avramopoulos revealed stressing the need for the implementation of EU-Turkey agreement because “we will be the first that we will suffer from the concequences in case it is not applied.”

Mr. Avarmopoulos also stressed that we are before a crucial crossroads not only in matters related to the migration but also to security issues.

On his side, Mr. Pavlopoulos thanked the European Commission and Avramopoulos for their efforts towards the implementation of the EU-Turkey agreement and warned not to relax because the problem is ahead of us and whatever relaxation would allow Turkey not to follow the conditions of the agreement, which would create huge problems in the summer season.