The European Commission has recommended that Turkish citizens be allowed to travel to Europe without visas on short vacations and business trips.
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The EU has historically demanded that Turkey first fulfil 72 benchmarks governing things such as human rights legislation, the definition of terrorism and introducing biometric passport systems.
“Kosovo has made great progress”, Migration Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos told reporters on Wednesday, adding that he hoped national governments and the European Parliament would approve the proposal quickly.
Many EU states still have concerns about the legality of the deal and the human rights situation in Turkey – where an increasing number of journalists and critics of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan have been prosecuted.
For its part, the “Financial Times” said that the European Commission proposed making countries pay a “solidarity contribution” of 250,000 ($290,000) euros per refugee they decline to take.
As of March 4, Turkey had met only around half of the 72 conditions attached to the deal, but top Turkish officials have said the country closed the gap in eight weeks. “This is why we are putting a proposal on the table which opens the way for the European Parliament and the Member States to decide to lift visa requirements, once the benchmarks have been met”.
But it will not grant Turks the right to get a job in Europe.
But members could choose not to take part for 12 months. Turkish officials have warned that if they are not granted visa-free status by then, they could pull back from the deal, under which they have agreed to take back thousands of Syrian and other asylum seekers from Greece.
But the refugee crisis has pushed the European Union to engage with Ankara, offering the promise of visa-free travel, an acceleration of accession talks and €6 billion in funding in exchange for Turkey reaccepting migrants who have travelled to Greece via Turkey.
Although the United Kingdom is outside of the Schengen Zone, immigrants can still travel freely to Britain once they are granted citizenship of another European Union member state.
One of the biggest obstacles in Turkey’s relations with the European Union is Ankara’s refusal to recognise European Union member Cyprus, the Mediterranean island divided for four decades after a 1974 Turkish invasion.
The so-called Dublin rules now in force have been criticised as obsolete and unfair to countries like Greece, where most of the migrants entered the bloc a year ago. This group includes people fleeing war-torn countries such as Syria, who are likely to be granted refugee status, as well as people who are seeking jobs and better lives, who governments are likely to rule are economic migrants.
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The Commission is proposing a special mechanism whereby refugees and migrants can be relocated to other countries if a crisis is declared – for example in Greece.
