EU recommends visa-free travel for Turkey

The European Union's executive Commission is recommending that Turkish citizens be allowed to travel to Europe without visas on short vacations and business trips, a major step toward fulfilling a key part of an agreement with Turkey to deal with the migrant crisis.

The Commission said Wednesday that Turkey has met most of the 72 criteria needed for a visa waiver, and it invited member states and EU lawmakers to endorse the move by June 30.

Commission Vice-President Frans Timmermans said "there is still work to be done as a matter of urgency but ifTurkey sustains the progress made, they can meet the remaining benchmarks."

Turkey must fulfill the final five criteria before the visa waiver is approved.

The move is part of a package of incentives offered to Turkey — including up to 6 billion euros ($6.8 billion) in aid for Syrian refugees and fast-track EU membership talks — to persuade Ankara to stop migrants heading to Europe and take thousands back from Greece.

That deal has raised legal and moral questions, as EU nations unable to agree among themselves about how to handle the refugee emergency chose instead to outsource it to Turkey, where almost 3 million refugees are staying, most of them people fleeing war in Syria.

Visa liberalization, which must come by June 30, would be an important sign that the Europeans are living up to their promises. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has warned that the whole agreement will collapse if the EU reneges on any pledge.

Once the visa proposal is endorsed, only Turkish citizens with biometric passports including facial and fingerprint data would be allowed to enter, Timmermans said.

Visa-free travel would be possible in all EU member states except for Britain and Ireland, which have provisions for opting out of such policies, and would include four members of the Schengen passport-free travel area; Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland.

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