The UN warned that Greece's capacity to assess asylum claims needed to be strengthened for the deal. Implementation was "crucial", the organisation said. But rights group Amnesty International was scathing, calling the agreement a "dark day for humanity".  An EU source told the BBC up to 72,000 Syrian migrants living in Turkey would be settled in the EU under the agreement.  They added that the mechanism would be abandoned if the numbers returned to Turkey exceeded that figure.  Also on Friday, Turkish officials said they detained 16 people smugglers and almost 1,800 migrants.  The operation was part of efforts to stop migrants reaching the Greek island of Lesbos, Reuters reported....European Council President Donald Tusk said there had been unanimous agreement between Turkey and the 28 EU members. It is hoped the plan will deter people from taking the often dangerous sea crossing from Turkey to Greece.  Mr Tusk stressed the deal was no "silver bullet" and was just one part of the EU's response to a crisis that has sharply divided the bloc's members. Mrs Merkel said she was satisfied but added "I have no illusions that what we agreed today will be accompanied by further setbacks". Prime Minister David Cameron has welcomed the deal, saying it could "significantly" reduce numbers of migrants crossing the eastern Mediterranean to enter Greece by boat.

Even the famously myopic British media now report what Mrs Merkel says as a matter of some note.

This partly reflects the fact she has been around for ten years, longer than any other European leader. But there is another reason, which goes to the forgotten heart of the debate about the European Union.  Who is boss? Who is in charge? Whose word counts? And how to deal with the obvious, the natural answer to those questions ever since the unification of Germany in 1871.

We don't talk about it, but it matters more than most of the froth and flotsam about this debate.

It is both right and proper that in this country the debate about EU membership is about our prosperity, security and without being too pompous, our destiny.

But in or out of the EU will not change the fact that the UK will continue to exist on the edge of a large continent with which we have long had a mingled history of occasional splendid isolation and equally irritated engagement.

The EU has grown steadily from its six founding members to 28 countries. Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg and the Netherlands signed up to the EEC, or Common Market in 1957. Britain, Ireland and Denmark joined in the first wave of expansion in 1973, followed by Greece in 1981 and Portugal and Spain five years later. Eastern Germany joined after unification and Austria, Finland and Sweden became part of the EU in 1995. The biggest enlargement came in 2004 when 10 new member countries joined. Romania and Bulgaria joined in 2007 and Croatia was latest to sign up in 2013. The EEC started out as a trading bloc - with free movement of goods and services within the Common Market - now its interests include reducing regional inequalities, preserving the environment, promoting human rights and investing in education and research.

The EU is Britain's biggest trading partner. British citizens are free to work in any EU country and EU funding is spent on supporting farmers, boosting jobs in the UK, redeveloping rundown areas, and grants for university research. The EU has contributed to cheaper travel by challenging monopolies and boosting competition. It has reduced the cost of mobile data roaming and set water quality standards in Europe.  But giving subsidies to farmers led to over-supply of some crops and so the EU was forced to rethink its agriculture policy. Critics say the EU has taken too much power from the member governments, its regulations are costly to the members economy and without them, Countries like Britain would be able to sign other trade deals with growing economies like China and India. They also say that the EU wastes taxpayers’ money on excessive bureaucracy - citing MEPs monthly trips to Strasbourg which cost 180m euros (£136m) per year.

For most of its short life, the European Central Bank fretted about inflation being too high. Now it has the opposite concern.  The fear of deflation explains the package of measures announced by Mario Draghi on Thursday. Three months ago, the ECB president disappointed the markets by coming up with less stimulus than he had led them to expect. This time there were no half measures.

The ECB sets three interest rates and it cut all of them. The central bank has been buying bonds in return for cash at a rate of €60bn (£47bn) a month, but will now up the purchases to €80bn a month for at least a year, and probably longer. It launched a scheme on Thursday under which commercial banks would be paid for borrowing money provided they re-cycle the funds to the private sector in the form of loans to households and companies.  And still it wasn’t enough to slake the insatiable thirst of the financial markets for more and more stimulus. The euro initially fell on the foreign exchanges but then rose when Draghi said the ECB did not anticipate the need for any further cuts in interest rates.

Despite the new set of panic selling hitting markets in the last minutes, Draghi is continuing to stress just how determined the ECB is fight off deflation.  He is asked if the central bank is over-reacting.  "It is not an over-reaction to low oil prices. It is a reaction to the fact conditions have significantly changed since early December. This change was due to a significant weakening of global growth prospects." He also bats away criticism that central banks are running out of tools or that their current measures don't work, highlighting that credit creation has increased after QE .  "Fragementation in the eurozone has now disappeared" he asserts. .. The euro and stocks are taking today's mega stimulus measures badly, despite the fact they exceeded all initial expectations.  It's difficult to tell just why, but Draghi's comments that rates do not need to head lower for now seems to have unleashed  a fresh round of panic for traders. However, and it is important to stress, =the Italian insisted that the ECB would be flexible in reacting when "the facts change".  Interest rates will also stay low and could head lower beyond the QE window into 2017. Before the press conference concluded, Draghi added:  "We are not in deflation" despite the -0.3pc consumer prices this year. Inflation will go up as a result of these measures, but Draghi admits it will take a long time to get near the close to 2pc target. "This is substantially difference to Japan in the 90s".

Angela Merkel was reeling from a series of election losses on Sunday that could be the most serious challenge she has faced to her power in Germany. The vote, on what the German press called “Super Sunday”, was for regional parliaments in three of the country’s federal states.  But the timing meant that it was seen as a virtual referendum on Mrs Merkel’s controversial “open-door” refugee policy. The results could seriously undermine the German chancellor as she tries to persuade EU leaders to agree to a deal with Turkey to resolve the migrant crisis. Mrs Merkel’s Christian Democrat party (CDU) was beaten in its stronghold of Baden-Württemberg for the first time in more than 50 years, according to exit polls...In the western state of Rhineland-Palatinate, it saw a lead of 10 per cent in the polls evaporate in just four months. Most damaging of all for Mrs Merkel, the far-Right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party stormed to its best election results ever on a campaign that focused almost exclusively on an anti-migrant message. In the East German state of Saxony-Anhalt, where the CDU managed to cling on to first place, celebrations were muted as the AfD secures a shock second place with 23 per cent of the vote. The AfD won seats in all three state parliaments and emerged from the night as a political force Mrs Merkel can no longer afford to ignore.  “We have fundamental problems in Germany that led to this election result,” Frauke Petry, the AfD leader said. “We’re seeing above all that voters are turning away in large numbers from the big established parties and voting for us. “They expect us finally to be the opposition that there hasn't been.” Ms Petry caused controversy ahead of the election by calling for police to shoot asylum seekers at the border.  “No question about it, none of the parties in the federal parliament has any reason to be happy about these election results,” Michael Grosse-Brömer, the parliamentary chief whip of Mrs Merkel's CDU, said.

Mario Draghi signaled that the ECB would be moving away from interest rate cuts towards "unconventional" measures in the future. He also said the governing council did not want to send the signal that rates can go into unlimited negative territory.

Negative rates are seen as a way to weaken a currency and help boost inflation, but Draghi's comments have seen the euro rocket today.  Maxime Alimi, Senior Economist at AXA Investment Managers, says the ECB has now all but given up on trying to manipulate the currency in favour of trying to boost growth through QE.  "The ECB no longer counts on a weaker euro to raise inflation, perhaps for fear of a reaction from the Federal Reserve. Therefore, we do not expect a significant depreciation of the euro, going forward", said Alimi.  "Conversely, the interest rate channel and the portfolio rebalancing channel are coming back to the fore. If our assessment is correct, don’t fight the ECB: European peripherals, high yield and equities stand to benefit."