Refugees Deeply | 11.12.2017

E.U. officials said that all $3.5 billion (3 billion euros) in support of Syrian refugees in Turkey will be contracted by the year’s end. The funds are part of a controversial deal with the E.U. that stemmed refugee flows into Greece in March 2016.

“We are working hard to complete the contracting of the first 3 billion euros by the end of this year. And definitely we will fulfill our commitments in order to see all projects concluded as soon as possible,” Christos Stylianides, the E.U. commissioner for humanitarian aid, told Turkish journalists in Brussels.

Turkey, which hosts more than 3 million Syrians, has complained at the apparently slow pace of disbursement of funds, saying only $1 billion (900 million euros) have been transferred since the deal.

The complaints were rejected by E.U. ambassador to Turkey Christian Berger, who said: “I have been working in the European Commission for 20 years and I can say that this [allocation of 900 million euros] is at the speed of light. I have not seen any other implementation so fast in less than one-and-a-half years,” Berger said.