Visa wars

WHEN Macedonia was granted visa-free access to the European Union’s Schengen area in 2009, its citizens popped champagne corks in the streets. Last week, as Turkey passed a last-minute flurry of laws to win the same prize, MPs brawled in the National Assembly. Now, as the European Commission proposes waiving visas for Turkey in a deal to send back migrants from the Greek islands, it stands accused of rewarding a serial human-rights violator and undermining its own values.

The decline tells a story. Over the years the EU has run out of tools to influence its neighbours. The most powerful was the promise of enlargement, but that has run out of steam; the club has struggled just to digest its eastward expansions in 2004 and 2007. Creating regional associations short of membership made elites happy, but often did little for ordinary citizens.

That left the prospect of visa-free travel as the last card in the deck, and for those Balkan countries that won it a few years ago, it succeeded. Laws improved and bureaucracies were streamlined. There were hiccups: last year Balkan Roma seeking a few months of benefits surged into rich countries like Germany, making unwarranted asylum claims. But these were quickly fixed by judicious rule changes.

Now Turkey, Ukraine, Georgia and Kosovo are all in line for visa waivers later this year. From the EU’s perspective, loosening visa rules for neighbours is a triple win. To obtain it, countries must pass better laws on matters like border control and data protection. The process encourages pro-EU, reformist forces in sometimes unstable countries. Perhaps most importantly, it encourages commercial and cultural exchange, and removes a source of grievance from people otherwise forced to endure long queues at embassies and mind-numbing piles of paperwork. “It is sometimes hard for outsiders to understand just how important this is for us,” says Natalie Sabanadze, Georgia’s ambassador to the EU.

Seen in this light, the proposal to exempt Turks from visa requirements looks positive. Turkey began negotiations to join the EU in 2005; its outraged politicians never fail to point out that it is the only candidate country still on the visa list. For their part officials in Brussels argued that visa liberalisation would bind Turkey closer to EU norms; would strengthen the hand of its pro-European prime minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, against the increasingly autocratic president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan; and would enable ordinary Turks to visit their relatives, zip around on Interrail trains and sell their wares at German trade shows. In other words, it would work for Turkey as it has for other beneficiaries.

Not so fast. The tourism and business links that visa-free travel will foster are an unalloyed good. But Turkey is on a dangerous path that a mere visa process will not derail. Mr Erdogan, determined to quash dissent, has detained journalists and academics under anti-terrorism laws. Asli Aydintasbas, of the European Council on Foreign Relations, points out that the legislation Turkey passed in the 2000s as part of its EU membership bid, which was still on track back then, has hardly stopped Mr Erdogan’s march towards illiberalism. As for Mr Davotuglu, this week he was squeezed from power by his irascible boss. That places the future of the migrant deal he negotiated with the EU in jeopardy.

Note the irony. Traditionally conceived, visa liberalisation is the sort of policy that might be designed by a foreign minister steeped in Joseph Nye’s theory of soft power. But in Turkey’s case, granting visa-free access to 75m people is simply the price paid by the EU to keep irregular migrants away. And extra safeguards will be put in place to forestall abuses, such as overstaying visas. Call it the revenge of the interior ministers. Once the stuff of geekery, their preoccupations—border security, asylum rules, passport technology—are now driving EU policymaking. “Before last year migration was like transport policy,” says one EU official. “Too boring for the alpha politicians.” Now it dominates summits.

The approach is infectious. This week the commission also proposed a radical revision of the EU’s rules on asylum-seekers. The plans include a complex formula to redistribute asylum-seekers around the EU from countries facing a huge influx, as Greece did last year. Countries that refuse to take their share will face big fines, and the EU asylum office’s role will be greatly expanded. The proposals are so far-reaching that Britain urgently sought an exemption ahead of its referendum on EU membership. (This was eventually secured in a weekend frenzy of phone calls between London and Brussels.) All involve a transfer of powers to Brussels; none would have been countenanced a couple of years ago. The business of migration, asylum and security, long the side act of EU policy, is becoming the main show.

All along the watchtower

The switch will not be easy. The commission’s asylum plans must now be discussed by Europe’s governments. Many, particularly in the continent’s eastern half, will not take kindly to orders from Brussels to receive refugees, or to the threat of fines. (A previous relocation plan flopped last year.) The deal with Turkey must be approved by governments as well as by the European Parliament, which never misses a chance to assert its independence from grubby politicking. Both will scrupulously monitor Turkey’s attempts to meet the five outstanding “benchmarks” that remain before visa-free travel may be granted. On one of them, Turkey’s draconian anti-terrorism laws, it is hard to see Mr Erdogan reversing course to a degree that will satisfy MEPs. Should the visa bid fail Mr Erdogan has vowed to tear up the migrant deal, and Mr Davutoglu will not be around to protect it.

A policy paradox is emerging for the EU. Europe’s governments have learned the hard way that they can manage the hot potatoes of migration and asylum only by co-operating. And yet it is because these issues matter so much that politicians are reluctant to cede control. There are big battles to come.