Turkey should get less European money for looking after Syrian refugees, the European Union's Budget Commissioner Günther Oettinger said on Sunday, Eurasia Diary reports cititng Deutsche Welle.
Oettinger, a member of Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union (CDU), told Welt am Sonntag newspaper that he thought "in the next tranche, the EU shouldn't pay such high payments to Turkey as up till now."
He argued that Turkey wouldn't be needing as much money because it was planning to resettle Syrian refugees in the "protective zone" it is currently trying to create in the Kurdish-occupied region of northern Syria.
He also said that many schools, hospitals, and shelters had been built with the money already provided by the EU, so the financial need would no longer be as great.
"Furthermore, in future we have to offer greater to support to other countries like Jordan or Lebanon," he told the newspaper. "It makes more sense to give the people a permanent home and to finance human dignity, than to give them no other choice than to come to us. Every place to live in Turkey or Jordan is less dangerous than the journey to Berlin, and cheaper."
The budget commissioner said that the EU had paid €6 billion ($6.6 billion) to aid organizations for refugees in Turkey since 2016.