EU leaders gear up for landmark migration deal

EU leaders convene on Thursday for a crucial two-day summit which will seek to end what European Council president Donald Tusk has called "the days of irregular migration" to the continent. The crisis is perhaps the number one political challenge facing the EU now, and the meeting comes five years since the start of Syria's civil war which has been a primary driver of the migrant flows.

Since the outlines of Europe's migration deal with Turkey were released, they have been criticised on moral, legal and practical grounds, including by the UN. Nevertheless, there is growing pressure on the continent's leaders to secure agreement which they assert could stabilise the currently chaotic mass migration, while potentially maintaining Europe's generous asylum system.

Growing popular discontent with the migration status quo was illustrated on Sunday with the results of three German regional election results which saw the new nationalist, anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD) Party making striking gains, and the ruling Christian Democrats losing ground in Baden-Wuerttemberg and Rhineland Palatinate amid unease over Chancellor Angela Merkel's so-called "open door" policy. And Germany, which took in around one million migrants last year, is not the only country where the issue is growing in salience.