Brussels, 12/10/2011 (Agence Europe) - At the beginning of October the European commissioner for home affairs and immigration, Cecilia Malmström, made a promise in an interview with a Turkish publication, Milliyet, that legal instruments for facilitating visa access for certain categories of Turkish citizens would be activated. It is in the context of the “visa code” that the commissioner stated that she sought to achieve a number of results over the next three months, which would also affect young people and students and even cost exemptions.
These stages are possible within the visa code (applicable to Schengen member countries). With this code, the Commission has a certain margin of manœuvre for making progress in the visa field, explained a spokesperson for the commissioner. The EU and Turkey, however, still do not have a visit facilitation agreement and even less so an agreement for liberalising matters in this field, explained a source at the Council.
For these two types of agreement, the Commission will in effect have to be given a mandate from the Council, which it has not yet received. Member states are effectively linking the granting of a mandate with Turkey's signature for a readmission agreement. Turkey has never hidden the fact that in exchange for this agreement it would like pledges not only on the facilitation of visas but also on the liberalisation of visas.
It will not be, however, until after Turkey has signed this agreement that the Council will be able to discuss a possible visa facilitation agreement, to begin with, followed by a process of liberalisation in this field, explained one source.
So far, announcements made by Malmström can be found in the conclusions of the Council of ministers for home affairs on 25 February. According to these conclusions, ministers supported the idea of a dialogue on visas, mobility and migration with Turkey. Nonetheless, the Council had been quite clear on this point (once again according to the same source) and the Commission acknowledged that this dialogue did not in any sense constitute a legal mandate for negotiating facilitation or liberalisation agreements.
In her interview with Milliyet, Malmström criticises the attitude adopted by member states vis-a-vis Ankara and asserted that it was “unfair” that all EU candidate countries had flexible visa regimes, whilst this did not exist for Turkey. (SP/transl.fl)