AFP, Athens, Greece :European Union President Donald Tusk on Thursday warned economic migrants not to come to Europe, after holding talks on the refugee crisis with Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras.”I want to appeal to all potential illegal economic migrants wherever you are from: Do not come to Europe. Do not believe the smugglers. Do not risk your lives and your money. It is all for nothing,” Tusk told a press conference in Athens. “Greece or any other European country will no longer be a transit country. The Schengen rules will enter into force again,” he added.”Excluding Greece from Schengen is neither an end nor a means in this crisis. Greece is part of Schengen, of the euro area and of the European Union and will remain so.” Tusk is in Athens as part of a regional tour on the migration crisis that has also seen him travel to Slovenia.He will meet Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu later Thursday in Ankara, where he will urge Turkey to offer more “intensive” help in reducing the flow of migrants to Europe via Greece.Tusk will then travel on to Istanbul for talks on Friday with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan ahead of next week’s EU summit with Turkey in Brussels, where the migrant crisis will top the agenda.PARIS: A senior European Union official carried a stark warning Thursday to the front lines of the migrant crisis, telling those seeking to flee poverty and unrest that Europe is no longer the answer, even as nearly 1 million migrants have now poured into Europe in the past year.”Do not come to Europe,” said Donald Tusk, president of the European Council, after meeting with the Greek prime minister in Athens. “Do not believe the smugglers. Do not risk your lives and your money. It is all for nothing.”Tusk’s comments came as a top U.N. official also warned Thursday that as many as 70,000 people could be “trapped” in Greece in the coming weeks because Macedonia and other European countries are shutting their borders, transforming Greece into a holding pen for migrants desperate to leave.Tusk also said it was up to Turkey, not its European neighbors, to decide how to manage a reduction in refugee numbers – a stance that Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu quickly rebuffed. Turkey is under pressure to reduce the numbers of migrants crossing into Greece as a March 7 summit meeting between Turkey and the European Union approaches to discuss the issue.In the past week, unrest has broken out among the more than 30,0000 refugees and migrants that Greek officials say are stranded at Greece’s blocked Macedonian border.There was also violence at a makeshift camp being dismantled in northern France. And on Thursday, British Prime Minister David Cameron and French President François Hollande held talks in Amiens seeking to contain the migrant crisis in northern France, where thousands of refugees are camped in squalid conditions just over two hours from London and Paris.
