Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan and EU Commissioner for Home Affairs Ylva Johansson discussed visa liberalization and irregular migration on Wednesday.
The meeting was held at the Turkish House on the sidelines of the 78th session of the U.N. General Assembly.
“Visa liberalization and combating illegal migration were discussed at the meeting,” the Turkish Foreign Ministry said on X, formerly known as Twitter.
Türkiye has the most extended history with the union and the most prolonged accession process, which only officially started in 2005 despite the first agreement being signed with the EU’s predecessor, the European Economic Community (EEC), in 1964. Since then, the process has been essentially frozen due to political roadblocks by certain EU members, including Greece and the Greek Cypriot administration, for reasons unrelated to membership criteria, according to Ankara.
The dialogue on visa liberalization aims to eliminate the requirement for Turkish citizens to obtain visas for short-term touristic, business, or family-related visits (90-180 days) to all EU member states except Ireland and the Schengen countries Iceland, Liechtenstein, Switzerland and Norway.
The dialogue launched simultaneously with the Türkiye-EU Readmission Agreement on Dec. 16, 2013, was carried out per a road map containing 72 criteria under five main groups.
The rules document security regarding the preparation of passports by EU standards, biometric passports, ensuring the security of passports, identity cards and other similar documents, migration management ensuring adequate control and surveillance at the borders, international protection and EU transactions related to foreigners.
They also include public order and security in terms of fighting and preventing organized crime, terrorism and corruption. In this context, harmonization with the EU acquis on the financing of terrorism, human trafficking and cybercrimes, judicial cooperation in criminal matters, protection of personal data, the protection of fundamental rights and freedoms, non-discrimination, access to travel and identity documents, and access to identity documents of refugees and stateless persons and readmission of irregular migrants were also topics on the agenda.
At that time, Türkiye implemented 66 of these conditions.
The six terms are the review of the Anti-Terror Law and the Penal Code, compliance of the Personal Data Protection Law and its institution with EU standards, making a judicial cooperation agreement with all member states, fully fulfilling the obligations arising from the readmission agreement, signing an operational cooperation agreement with EUROPOL and the approval of laws fulfilling the Council of Europe’s GRECO recommendations, have still not been met.
Türkiye has said some of these conditions are ready to be implemented soon.
