Our Plan for the Aegean

www.esiweb.org 4 The number of people who drowned in the Aegean Sea also fell immediately, from 1,152 in the year before the declaration to 81 in the year after. [...] The EU … will further speed up the disbursement of the initially allocated 3 billion euros under the Facility for Refugees in Turkey … Once these resources are about to be used to the full, and provided the above commitments are met, the EU will mobilise additional funding for the Facility of an additional 3 billion euro up to the end of 2018. [...] On the plane back to the Netherlands, Samsom read Gerald Knaus’s plan." Back in The Hague, Samsom immediately proposed to his coalition partner Mark Rutte to make our plan the basis of the strategy of the Dutch EU presidency starting in January 2016. [...] www.esiweb.org 23 The Greek authorities and the European Commission did not develop a plan for the resources needed to implement the settlement on the islands, nor a strategy for the efficient organisation of asylum procedures. [...] Human rights organizations attacked the agreement, not noticing that the bad conditions on the islands were not the result of the declaration, but in fact the alternative to its implementation.