Italy's Amato pushes for Turks' visa-free travel to Europe

Turkey should be treated fairly and given a roadmap by the European Union toward visa-free travel to Europe, said Italian Interior Minister Giuliano Amato yesterday. "It is unfair that I come here freely but you can't," Amato, also a former prime minister, told a small delegation from civil society organizations invited by the European Stability Initiative (ESI), which helped five Western Balkan countries obtain visa-free travel with the EU. Among all EU candidate and potential candidate countries, Turkey remains the only one without an official roadmap toward visa-free travel. Serbs, Macedonians and Montenegrins have been traveling to the EU without visas since late 2009 even though their countries have not even begun accession negotiations. Turkey has fulfilled many of the requirements raised by Brussels and achieved an EU-Turkey readmission agreement, but five years into the accession talks, it has not been given a "visa roadmap" outlining internal security reforms.