EU advances Turkey visa deal amid migration fears

The European Commission will this week say Turkey has broadly met conditions for visa-free travel, despite some missing elements.

The visa decision is the “cornerstone” of an EU i deal to send back migrants to Turkey. But concerns over irregular migration are likely to see internal EU border checks kept in place.

An EU source told EUobserver on Monday (2 May): “They [the commission] will issue a positive recommendation. But it remains to be seen what kind of legal formulas and tricks they will use to justify the move.”

Speaking to EUobserver from Turkey also on Monday, Sinan Ulgen the head of the Istanbul-based Centre for Economics, said: “The general understanding is that the commission will propose visa liberalisation even though Turkey has not met all the criteria.”

The commission had given Turkey a list of 72 benchmarks to meet.

Some of those which Turkey will have to implement by June, when the visa perks are due to start, include revising anti-terrorism laws to protect minority rights and launching judicial cooperation with Cyprus, which Turkey does not recognise as a sovereign state.

Others include extending EU data protection standards to its security services, increasing transparency of funding for political parties, and giving Cypriot nationals free acess to Turkey.

Urtay said Cypriot judicial cooperation and counter-terrorism reforms will be the hardest in political terms, the latter “because it comes at a time when Turkey is facing a wave of terrorist attacks by the PKK and Islamic State.”

The PKK is a militant Kurdish group. Islamic State is a jihadist group based in Iraq and Syria.

Urtay added that visa-free travel is a “cornerstone” of the migrant deal and said Ankara is serious when it says it would stop migrant readmissions unless it gets the travel perks.

“The other components of the deal have to do with improving conditions for Syrians. But Syrians do not vote [in Turkey] and the visa agreement is the main benefit of the accord as far as Turkish people are concerned,” he said.

The commission recommendation must be approved by a majority of EU states in the council and by MEPs.

It comes at a time of heightened sensitivity on immigration in Europe.

In a reflection of the political mood, France and Germany have proposed to make it easier to suspend visa-free travel deals to the EU in future in case of its abuse.

"There will be no refugee discount … We'll look cool-headedly in parliament at whether Turkey has fulfilled the conditions for visa liberalization,” Manfred Weber, a senior German MEP told the Reuters news agency.

Selim Yenel, Turkey’s ambassador to the EU, said: “the Franco-German proposal aims at appeasing the possible fears of some EU nations and perhaps make it easier to win the support of some members states.”

Several EU states over the past six months introduced border checks inside the EU’s free-travel Schengen zone to try to gain control over irregular movements of people.

The temporary checks are to expire on 12 May.

EU commissioner Frans Timmermans told German radio on Sunday that the EU needs to get back to normal on free movement.

But one day earlier, six EU states - Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany and Sweden - wrote to him in a joint letter asking the commission to extend the possibilty of border checks for another six months.

They said border control on the EU’s external frontiers has improved bu that there are still “ongoing failures,” according to German daily Die Welt.