Κυριακή 28 Νοεμβρίου 2010

Visa liberalisation could boost Turkey's EU bid


se times

23/11/2010
European Stability Initiative experts have come up with a visa roadmap proposal meant to revive the faltering accession process.
By Baris Yilmaz for Southeast European Times -- 23/11/10


Turkey's EU accession talks risk imminent failure due to the Cyprus dispute and France's opposition to full membership for Turkey. Without a breakthrough, the process will come to a halt at the end of 2011.
Much of the Turkish public has already lost interest. In 2004, 73% of Turks considered EU membership to be a good thing, but that number dropped to 38% by 2010. The EU's decision to offer visa-free travel to almost all Balkan countries, leaving Turkey in the cold, has frustrated Turks and deepened their belief that their country will never enter the EU.
"It is hard to believe that you are really welcome to join a Union when citizens are not even trusted to travel there without a complex, expensive and sometimes demeaning process of being screened in consulates," Berlin-based European Stability Initiative (ESI) Chairman Gerald Knaus told SETimes.
"At a time when Turkish citizens are desperate to see new signs of commitment and goodwill from Europe, the EU must offer Turkey a roadmap for lifting visa restrictions," he said, adding that this will increase support for the EU process and reforms in Turkey. "This will be the Viagra for the membership process."
Of all the candidate countries, Turkey remains the only one without a formal EU roadmap towards visa-free travel. EU officials say that, until recently, the absence of an EU-Turkey re-admission agreement posed a key obstacle to such a roadmap.
Seven years of negotiations on the document are now coming to a close. Under the re-admission agreement, Turkey will be obliged to take back citizens found to be residing illegally in an EU state, as well as third-country nationals and stateless persons found to have entered the EU via Turkey.
Unlike the smaller Balkan countries, Turkey has a population of more than 72 million and a large number of unemployed people. The country is also is one of the main transit routes for international human trafficking.
"The risk would be manageable ... visa liberalisation does not mean the right to work," Knaus says.
According to the ESI, with a visa roadmap, Turkey will increase co-operation with the EU on security issues, and also further improve its human rights situation and non-discrimination policies so that no courts in the EU would have to grant asylum to Turkish citizens, because there would no longer be any need.

Cengiz Aktar, chairman of the Department of EU Relations at Bahcesehir University says a move by the EU towards visa liberalisation is extremely important, but doubts whether it can become reality.
"Visa liberalisation and the EU's move to address Turkey's concerns on the functioning of the Customs Union are the key points that can restore confidence and revive the EU process," he told SETimes.
According to Aktar, one source of frustration among Turks is the failure to manage expectations, a situation fuelled by some politicians and media.
"One has to be careful not to create false expectations among the public. It seems visa liberalisation, if and once agreed on, would only apply to businessmen, scholars and students. One has to tell this straight from the beginning," Aktar cautioned.
This content was commissioned for SETimes.com.

read more: se times

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