Turkish citizens will be able to visit Schengen countries in Europe without a visa from July 1 under an EU proposal unveiled in Brussels yesterday, although in practice only a small proportion will be eligible to travel this summer.
Of the 75 million Turkish nationals, 7.5 million hold passports and those who do will have to upgrade them from June 1 to “third generation” biometric documents, which include fingerprint data, to qualify for the visa exemption.
The European Commission put forward the proposal as part of a wider accord to try to stop tens of thousands of asylum seekers travelling each month to Greece and on to western Europe.
The Turkish embassy to the European Union told The Times that it expected “thousands, but not millions” to obtain the upgrade by the start of the travel period.
The deal does not cover the UK, which is not in the Schengen zone, and requires approval by the Schengen states and European parliament.
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The refugee crisis has threatened to tear apart the EU as individual countries shut internal borders and refuse to share the asylum burden with the frontline states Greece and Italy.
The commission issued its visa proposal despite the fact that Turkey had not met five out of 72 criteria. It also went ahead despite concerns that President Erdogan is becoming increasingly authoritarian.
The five criteria, to be met by July 1, involve transparency of funding of Turkish political parties, protection of minorities in counterterrorism laws, new data protection rules, full co-operation with the police agency Europol, and judicial co-operation with all EU countries, including Cyprus.
Frans Timmermans, the EU commission’s deputy head, said yesterday that the fast-track visa deal was “not a free ride” for Turkey. He added that the EU planned to create a “snap back” mechanism to suspend visa-free travel if a large number of Turkish people, or lots of people from any other country with an EU visa waiver, overstayed their 90-day permits or applied for asylum.