Visa
roadblock threatens EU-Turkey migration deal
The clock is ticking for
Ankara on meeting the terms of the agreement, but it may not even
matter.
By JACOPO BARIGAZZI AND MAÏA
DE LA BAUME 4/28/16, 5:32 AM CET Updated 4/28/16, 9:47 AM CET
The debate over whether
Turkish citizens will be able to travel to the EU without visas is
often portrayed as a numbers game: Will Ankara be able to complete a
list of 72 mandatory “benchmarks” in time to satisfy the terms of
its deal?
But there’s another box
Turkey may never be able to tick: support from the European
Parliament, whose members are growing increasingly uncomfortable with
the idea of giving anything to the government of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan
as long as questions remain about its commitment to human rights and
the rule of law.
MEPs and diplomats say that if
Turkey fails to meet all of the required criteria — which include
guarantees to protect civil liberties — they will exercise their
legislative power to deny visa liberalization. For its part, Turkey
has already said that lifting the restrictions before June is a
non-negotiable part of its controversial agreement to stem the flow
of refugees into the EU.
Unless somebody backs down,
that means the EU’s whole deal with Ankara — pushed by Angela
Merkel, hashed out in difficult negotiations with the European
Commission and other EU leaders, and now vigorously defended by
Council President Donald Tusk — could unravel altogether.
A key deadline hits next
Wednesday, when the Commission will issue its next report on Turkey’s
progress in meeting the criteria. MEPs say they worry the Commission
will try to gloss over shortcomings in that progress in order to keep
Ankara happy. They promise they will insist on holding everyone to
the EU rules.
“The feeling of lack of
trust on the visa [liberalization] and on the camps [for refugees] is
widespread, no one believes in it but we cannot say it openly because
there is no alternative” — An EU diplomat
“Turkey has to fulfill the
same requirements for visa liberalization as other countries did,”
said Kati Piri, a Socialist MEP and member of the Parliament’s
Foreign Affairs Committee. “Lowering European standards in order to
please Ankara is not part of any deal.”
It’s almost a no-win
situation for the Commission. According to Alexandra Stiglmayer,
senior analyst at the European Stability Initiative think tank, it
“can either pretend that everything is fine, propose visa-free
travel, and lose credibility; or it can say that Turkey has not met
all the benchmarks and not propose visa-free travel for now — but
then the deal is off.”
Piri, a Parliament rapporteur
on the Commission’s Turkey progress report, went even further,
saying that if the Commission gives Turkey a green light despite the
concerns, Piri said, “it can count on a critical reception in the
European Parliament.”
Commission Vice President
Frans Timmermans defended the process in a European Parliament debate
Thursday morning, saying the EU would make sure to hold Ankara
responsible for meeting the visa requirements.
“The onus is on Turkey. They
have to comply with the 72 benchmarks that are in there. They say
they can do that,” Timmermans said. “We will not play around with
those benchmarks. They are clear, they are legally framed and we will
report on them with precision.”
EU officials continue to hail
the agreement with Ankara as a success story in the effort to control
migration flows. At first blush the numbers from EU border agency
Frontex, which show a significant decrease in the number of migrants
arriving in Greece, bear this out. And Tusk, after a visit to a
refugee camp with Merkel on Saturday, offered an endorsement of
Turkey as the “best example in the world of how to treat refugees.”
But the enthusiasm ends there.
“The feeling of lack of
trust on the visa [liberalization] and on the camps [for refugees] is
widespread, no one believes in it but we cannot say it openly because
there is no alternative,” said an EU diplomat.
Talks between the EU and
Turkey on lifting visa restrictions began in December 2013, but
progress was slow at first. After two years, Turkey had fulfilled
just 35 of the EU’s 72 requirements for visa liberalization. But
when Turkey became the political center of the migration debate —
the funnel point for thousands of refugees trying to make it from the
Middle East to Europe — Ankara saw an opportunity to speed things
up.
It made visa liberalization
one of the key demands in its agreement with the EU to slow the flow
of refugees. Along with €6 billion in EU aid to help Turkey cope
with the 2.7 million refugees on its soil, visa liberalization was
the most concrete demand. A promise to re-open talks on Turkey’s
bid to join the EU — which almost everyone considers a long shot —
was left more vague. The visa promise had a clear deadline and clear
ultimatum from Ankara: without it, the deal is off.
But since it started being
implemented, the agreement has come under criticism from NGOs and
political leaders, who have raised fears about how refugees returned
to Turkey are being treated, and who have blasted Ankara for
authoritarian policies on human rights and freedom of the press.
Apparently confident that the
deal is in place, Erdoğan has continued to play bad-cop, provoking
the EU with often belligerent rhetoric and political moves to show he
is unconcerned with criticism. His demand that Germany investigate a
comedian for off-color satirical remarks about him has set off a
firestorm of debate over how much the EU is willing to sacrifice its
principles in the name of keeping migration under some semblance of
control.
Roadblock ahead
Meanwhile, Ankara is still
behind in the numbers game.
“There are still 12
benchmarks that are not fulfilled at all or which are only partially
fulfilled, with no positive developments observed by the Commission,”
the European Stability Initiative, a think tank specialized in
southeastern Europe and enlargement, said in a report issued in March
called “Turkey’s Visa Liberalization Scorecard.”
“We believe that we have met
most of the benchmarks and will fulfill almost all of them by next
week” — A senior Turkish official
Last month, a majority of MEPs
approved Piri report’s on Turkey, which criticized the country for
“backsliding” on democracy and the rule of law, and urged the EU
to avoid “outsourcing” the refugee crisis to Turkey.
But Turkish officials downplay
these concerns, insisting that Ankara will live up to its
commitments.
“We believe that we have met
most of the benchmarks and will fulfill almost all of them by next
week,” said one senior Turkish official, saying that some of the
measures “are impossible because of the timing.”
How MEPs and national
governments react to that “almost” will be the key factor.
Many say Turkey will struggle
to implement all the European requirements. One of the criteria, for
example, requires that a country “ensure the right to liberty and
security, the right to a fair trial and freedom of expression, of
assembly and association in practice.”
That could be a hard sell for
Ankara in the EU right now. Turkey’s government has opened as many
as 1,845 legal cases against people accused of insulting Erdoğan
since he was elected president in 2014, Turkey’s justice minister
said at the beginning of March. In recent days there have been other
public-relations problems for Turkey in the EU.
On Monday Turkey demanded that
a photograph be removed from an exhibition in Geneva because it links
Erdoğan to the death of a teenager in anti-government protests. Over
the weekend Ebru Umar, a Dutch journalist of Turkish origin, was
arrested while on holiday in Turkey over her column in a Dutch daily
criticizing Turkey’s efforts to silence free speech in Europe.
Assurances from Ankara
For now, Turkey and the EU are
acting as if both sides are keeping up their end of the deal. The
Commission confirmed receiving a letter from Turkish authorities
promising to provide protection for non-Syrian refugees returned,
which had been a sticking point for humanitarian organizations.
Europe is going ahead in opening a new area of talks on Turkey’s
long shot EU membership bid.
In March it was agreed that a
new chapter on economic integration would open by June, and on
Tuesday a Commission spokeswoman confirmed that “we are on track”
for it.
But some say the talk has been
cheap.
“It has been
counterproductive for the Commission and EU leaders to say that they
expect Turkey to meet all benchmarks, that the criteria will not be
watered down for Turkey,” said Stiglmayer, the analyst. “Turkey
will not establish freedom of expression in the next few weeks and
meet the human rights benchmark.”
Some diplomats argue that
there could be a third way, a classic EU fudge: going ahead with the
visa liberalization but announcing that the “Commission may have to
give an update in June only on a few points.”
At this point it’s unclear
whether anyone would buy that.
Authors:
Jacopo Barigazzi and Maïa de
La Baume
France,
Germany propose ‘emergency brake’ in Turkey visa deal
Proposed
tougher line intended to stem criticism of visa liberalization.
By FLORIAN EDER
4/28/16, 9:17 AM CET
France and Germany
want to build an “emergency brake” into future visa-free travel
agreements with non-EU countries such as Turkey, POLITICO has
learned.
The measure would
come into effect once too many Turks – or too many Georgians, whose
government is also discussing visa-free travel with the EU – make
use of arrangements that their respective governments are currently
negotiating.
Paris and Berlin put
forward a joint proposal “on a mechanism to suspend visa-free
travel,” dated April 27 and obtained by POLITICO. The “current
migration and refugee trends make it necessary to have an efficient
mechanism in place to suspend visa liberalization,” the document
says.
The proposal is
intended to put additional pressure on negotiating partners and
counter domestic criticism of visa liberalization, which is growing
louder in Germany, France, the Netherlands, Austria, and elsewhere.
The European
Parliament will also have to approve the visa deal with Turkey once
the European Commission makes a proposal, expected next week.
Visa liberalization
is part of the refugee deal Turkey and EU leaders agreed in March and
the deal’s authors state that it “is one of the priorities of the
EU.”
However, the new
proposal from France and Germany suggests the development of “a
snap-back mechanism” which would “in a transparent procedure,
suspend visa-free travel for nationals of third countries” if they
“no longer meet specific criteria.” That would force the Turkish
government to consistently and permanently fulfil EU conditions.
Questions remain
about the commitment of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s government to human
rights.
ALSO ON POLITICO
Visa roadblock
threatens EU-Turkey migration deal
JACOPO BARIGAZZI and
MAÏA DE LA BAUME
German Chancellor
Angela Merkel, Turkey's Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu and President
of the European Council Donald Tusk cut a red ribbon opening a child
protection center on April 23, 2016 in Gaziantep, Turkey.
ALSO ON POLITICO
Turkey says refugee
deal hinges on visa liberalization
VINCE CHADWICK
“The whole
procedure should be faster than the current one, which takes at least
9 months,” the two governments wrote.
They propose three
possible triggers for the emergency suspension of visa-free travel: a
“substantial increase” first in the number of people “staying
in a member state unlawfully” – in other words those arriving as
tourists but not leaving again – second, in the number of asylum
requests from the country, and third “in the number of rejected
requests for readmission” of nationals from the other country.
The Commission would
monitor the situation and submit “regular and frequent” reports
that must “also pay attention to increases in crime, efficiency of
the fight against corruption, organized crime, document fraud,
illegal border-crossings and overall quality of cooperation in the
field of readmission of irregular migrants.”
The Council and the
European Parliament would decide on a temporary suspension on this
basis and Germany and France also aim to build a mechanism that
allows every country to ask for the activation of the “emergency
brake”: “Member states shall be able to report, at any time, that
a situation has emerged requiring the use of the suspension
mechanism,” the proposal says.
Authors:
Florian Eder
Sem comentários:
Enviar um comentário