Turkey has missed an EU deadline that would have allowed its citizens visa-free travel through most of Europe, amid ongoing tensions over a controversial migration deal.
EU leaders promised the Turkish government that 79 million Turks could have access to Europe’s 26-country border-free Schengen travel zone by June, as part of a hotly disputed bargain on migration. But this was always conditional on Turkey meeting 72 EU conditions on border security and fundamental rights.
The European commission announced on Wednesday that Turkey had still failed to meet some of the conditions, including changes to its counter-terrorism legislation.
In a separate decision, EU ambassadors are expected to approve the opening of negotiations on one part of Turkish membership talks later on Wednesday. The decision to open talks on budget is a symbolic gesture that was promised under the migration deal.
The prospect of Turkey’s membership of the EU has inflamed the UK EU referendum debate even though Turkey is unlikely to join for decades, if ever. The visa deal does not apply to the UK or Ireland, which are outside the EU’s Schengen area.
Since Turkey’s EU membership talks began in 2005, only one of the 35 “chapters” has been closed. Several are blocked over the country’s long-running dispute with Cyprus, while Turkey is seen by the EU as regressing on freedom of expression and the rule of law.
The widely expected decision to delay the visa deal came one day after the EU’s ambassador to Turkey resigned. Hansjörg Haber will leave his post as the EU ambassador to Turkey in August, after making provocative comments about the migration deal that infuriated the Turkish government. The German diplomat, who was only appointed last August, was accused of showing disrespect for Turkish national values and Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
Doubts about the visa deal have mounted ever since Erdoğan ousted the prime minister who led negotiations with the EU. Turkey’s strongman leader has flatly rejected EU calls to rewrite his country’s anti-terrorism laws, saying: “We’ll go our way, you go yours.”
In a statement the European commission said progress on the EU-Turkey deal was fragile.
But Dimitris Avramopoulos, the European commissioner in charge of migration and visa policy, said he expected Turkey to meet the EU conditions on visa-free travel. “Statement diplomacy is not very helpful,” he said, adding that his talks with government officials at the highest possible level showed a strong will to cooperate with the EU.
“I believe the migration crisis is bringing Turkey closer to Europe,” he said.
He declined to specify when the deal could be agreed, muddying expectations that this might happen when the EU published its next progress report in September.
Anxieties about visa-free travel in the EU have surfaced in several countries. A visa-free deal for Georgia’s 5 million citizens was put on hold last week, after last-minute opposition from France, Italy and Germany. The EU is also negotiating a visa-free travel deal with Ukraine. Governments, led by France and Germany, have insisted on an emergency brake that would allow them to halt the arrangement if there was abuse of the rules.
Since the EU agreed the migration pact with Turkey in March, the number of migrants making the perilous journey to Greece has fallen sharply. Fewer than 50 people a day risked the dangerous Aegean Sea crossing in May on average, compared to daily arrivals of up to 2,000 at the start of the year.
So far 511 Syrian refugees have been resettled in Europe from Turkey, under the one-for-one scheme. Around 462 migrants, including 31 Syrians, have been sent back to Turkey from Greece.
The EU executive also called on Greece to take urgent steps to improve its asylum claims system, which fell foul of human rights standards even before a surge in arrivals on Greek beaches last year. Issuing a series of recommendations, it said Greece had to do more to ensure the safety of unaccompanied children and guarantee legal aid for claimants.
But a senior human rights advocate at the Council of Europe said the EU-Turkey deal had created problems for Greece, which was struggling to cope with processing asylum claims.
Tomáš Boček, special representative on migration and refugees at the Council of Europe, said migrants and refugees were spending too long in overcrowded camps and asylum-processing “hotspots” in Greece while they awaited a decision on their claims.
Around 50,000 people are on the Greek mainland, while a further 7,000-8,000 are estimated to be in camps on the Greek islands.
The Council of Europe, which is not an EU body, has sharply criticised the EU-Turkey deal as a possible breach of international law.
Boček, who served as the Czech Republic’s ambassador to the EU, recently visited Turkey, which is housing 3.1 million refugees.
Ahead of a report to be published later this summer, he voiced concern that half a million Syrian refugee children were not in school in Turkey.
Many children were working in fields or textile factories to help support their families, he said. “It would be difficult for any country to deal with this, but there are shortcomings, which are understandable because of this great number of refugees.”