Commissioner Olivér Várhelyi's press statement during the joint press conference in Ankara, Türkiye

Joint press conference in Ankara, Türkiye

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I think we have had a very encouraging and important meeting today.

I've seen already the vice president, the trade minister. We had a long, extensive discussion with the foreign minister. From here, I'm going to see the minister of finance, interior. So I think we have a full day, and the day is about the follow-up to the debate of the European Council in April. I think that we should take all the opportunity emerging from that decision.

We have read very carefully the statements made here in Ankara back then in April.

Also, I listen very carefully now to [Minister] Hakan.

I would, on the other hand, like to reassure Türkiye and also the minister that our interpretation is that we got the green light to advance the work on re-energizing our relationship in a cooperative and mutually beneficial manner based on the recommendations of our joint proposals made together with High Representative Joseph Borrell back in 2023.

We think – when we think about Türkiye, we think about a candidate country, a key partner, a strategic and major NATO ally, and a country that is in the crossroads of two armed conflicts.

Therefore, our engagement is more necessary than ever, and this is why I want to do as much as I can after the European Council decision so that we can take one by one the different elements and strands of the work forward.

Now, we have seen a strong uptake here in Türkiye about the need to intensify even further the people-to-people contact, meaning providing easier access for Turkish citizens to enter the EU and also Europeans to come to Türkiye.

Last year, we have seen 30 percent of increase in visa applications in Türkiye, which shows a huge interest from the public of Türkiye towards the European Union.

But for that, of course, to work and to ensure that the people can enjoy this possibility, we need visa facilitation.

We discussed with the minister how to improve the situation on the ground so that people can get their visas faster, so that they get visas that are valid for longer time and with which they can access the European Union several times during this period.

And that, of course, will also discuss the need for the economic relations to make another big leap, but for that we need also the businessmen to be able to travel and also the students to be able to travel easier.

Because if you look at the economy, what you see is a major success story. A major success story because only last year we have broken an all-time record in terms of trade. We are well above 200 billion euros. We were at 206 billion euros in trade last year. This makes Türkiye to be the EU's fifth biggest and largest trading partner. This is an important part of the ranking, and not to mention the fact that the European Union continues to be the largest source of foreign direct investment. So this also creates a huge responsibility for the both of us to not only maintain this, but to create the ground to evolve it, to give it a boost.

This is why we discussed the possibilities of further investments in Türkiye.

This is, again, another part of the proposal we have made, something we started working on already last year, and that is an EU-Türkiye Investment Platform.

In that Platform we would like to mobilize not only public investments, but also private investments. We are looking at now the technical work in preparing for the Platform to start to function. And in doing that, we hope to conclude all the groundwork this year so that from next year we will be already seeing projects emerging. We will already see a direct contribution of this Platform into Türkiye's economy.

Just to give you an idea of the size of the operation, we hope to mobilize at least – this is what we see now – at least 2.4 billion euros of direct investments into the Turkish economy.

To be able to do that – and that's another topic that we discussed – to be able to do that, we need all our international financial partners to help us, because they can multiply significantly the funds that we have in this platform. And this is why I'm very happy to see that the EIB is making progress to come back with full operations in Türkiye. The first operation we have already seen during the earthquake, and with the EU-Türkiye investment platform, you will see them fully coming back in operation on that.

The Platform is supposed to help to diversify further the economy, but also to attract investments in crucial areas like the green economy or digital economy, and also connectivity, innovation, technology. We are covering, I think, 14 areas of the economy, so you will see a reinforced European presence in the economy starting from next year.

Looking ahead, I'm sure that I can also talk on behalf of the minister, is our firm condition that we need each other more and more, and that we need to engage more and more. This is why I think it is very important that the high-level dialogues are also coming back to life, and this is why it is very important that we meet more regularly, and we try to bring things further, even faster.

Now, of course, we are also sharing a neighbourhood together with Türkiye, and it means that we are challenged by the exact same geopolitical changes, and this is why we also agree that we work to mitigate as much as we can the negative impacts of these conflicts. We also talked about, of course, the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine and all the implications of that.

So, I think today was and is an intensive working day.

We see that now the proposals we made and the recommendations we made last year are taking off the ground, so we see that implementation is now on its way, and I do hope that still this year we will see even more of it being actually implemented on the ground.

Thank you very much again, Minister.

Thank you.