Top EU officials to visit Turkey with aim to revive ties

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Charles Michel will visit Turkey on April 6 to hold talks with President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in a bid to revive relations between Ankara and Brussels after last year's tensions.

The EU officials are expected to discuss new steps to return to a positive track in EU-Turkey ties, by relaunching high-level political dialogue, starting negotiations on the modernization of the 25-year-old Customs Union, and by renewing the 2016 EU-Turkey refugee deal to fund more for Turkey's hosting of millions of Syrians.

"We are ready, with the European Council, with member states, to put more concrete proposals on the table in order to have a more stable, more predictable relationship with Turkey," EU Spokesperson Barend Leyts said last week.

His statement came following a virtual EU leaders' summit on March 25-26 during which they discussed a report on the future of Turkish-EU relations, prepared by the EU's foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, and the European Commission and decided to continue negotiations on a constructive agenda.

The European Council's conclusions stressed the de-escalation in the eastern Mediterranean and the resumption of the Turkish-Greek dialogue as positive steps and pledged to start the implementation of what it calls the positive agenda, including the modernization of the Customs Union and the renewal of the migrant deal of 2016.

Intensifying talks with Turkey to address the current difficulties in the implementation of the Customs Union, ensuring its effective application to all member states, and inviting in parallel the Council to work on a mandate for the modernization of the Customs Union are cited among economic...