BRUSSELS: The European Commission will on Wednesday give conditional backing to visa-free travel for more than 80 million Turks as the EU tries to save a controversial deal with Ankara to solve the migrant crisis.
Brussels is also set to announce further measures to tackle the biggest influx of migrants since World War II, with an extension of border controls in the passport-free Schengen zone and an overhaul of its asylum rules.
Turkey has threatened to tear up the March agreement to take back migrants who cross the Aegean Sea to Greece if the EU fails to keep its promise to allow Turkish citizens to travel without visas to the Schengen area by next month.
Many EU states still have concerns about the legality of the deal and the human rights situation in Turkey, and the plan for 90-day visas must be cleared by all 28 nations in the bloc and the European Parliament.
The Commission is expected to find that Turkey has achieved only 64 of the 72 benchmarks needed for visa-free travel, which range from biometric passports to respect for human rights, European sources told AFP.
