Short-term impact: Easing burdens<\/strong><\/p>\n Europe remains a center of attraction, owing to its technological edge and high-quality education. Yet the financial burden on Turkish citizens has been staggering. In 2024 alone, Turkish citizens paid 93.9 million euros ($109.40 million) in Schengen visa fees, with 13.6 million euros of that amount wasted on rejected applications. Stretch that over the last 15 years and you\u2019re looking at more than 775 million euros from households and businesses.<\/p>\n Undoubtedly, longer visa validity won\u2019t make the costs disappear, but it will serve the national interest by sparing people from the exhausting cycle of reapplying every few months for the Schengen visas.<\/p>\n Trade tells an equally powerful story. Trade between T\u00fcrkiye and the EU reached 210.7 billion euros last year, with exports of 98.4 billion euros, mainly comprising automotive parts, machinery, electronics and textiles, and imports of 112.3 billion euros in European industrial goods and chemicals.<\/p>\n With visa facilitation in place, T\u00fcrkiye\u2019s trade volume isn\u2019t only set to grow, but it is also likely to reach new heights, providing our exporters with the speed and access they need to stay ahead of foreign rivals, such as China.<\/p>\n This is not only about trade; education and tourism face similar barriers.<\/p>\n One-way partnership: human cost<\/strong><\/p>\n According to the European Commission\u2019s official Schengen visa statistics, Turkish citizens submitted 1,173,917 applications in 2024, placing T\u00fcrkiye second globally after China. Despite strong demand, the rejection rate remained at 14.5%, resulting in more than 170,000 applications being refused, which cost over 13.6 million euros in non-refundable fees, in addition to the extra expenses. Within that number were thousands of Turkish students accepted into European universities and Erasmus exchanges. Many waited months for an appointment, only to miss classes, programs or scholarship deadlines.<\/p>\n These delays had been discussed in numerous meetings and negotiations, as they had become a symbol of how much the system needed to change, and it did.<\/p>\n Tourism makes the imbalance crystal clear. EU citizens enjoy T\u00fcrkiye without a visa, and they do so in record numbers. According to figures shared by the Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat), 52.6 million foreign visitors worldwide came to T\u00fcrkiye in 2024, generating $61.1 billion in revenue, with Germany alone sending over 6.6 million tourists. It is safe to say that European countries make up a significant share of this total.<\/p>\n On the other hand, during the same period, approximately 11.4 million Turkish citizens traveled abroad, spending nearly $7.7 billion on their trips. Only an estimated 1.1 to 1.2 million of these journeys were to EU countries, based on Schengen visa data, despite T\u00fcrkiye\u2019s deep economic and social ties with Europe.<\/p>\n While it may look good for T\u00fcrkiye\u2019s economy, a genuine partnership is built on reciprocity, not one-way traffic. The new measures are expected to make it easier for Turkish passport holders to travel freely across Europe.<\/p>\n
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