EU, Türkiye to mull renewal of customs union

The European Union and Türkiye are discussing an update of their customs union, Report informs referring to Bloomberg.

“There are difficult issues to be addressed in this regard,” Paolo Gentiloni, the EU commissioner responsible for customs, told Bloomberg in a statement. “We will look into these with our teams after the summer and see whether it is possible to build on these new signals from Türkiye.”

Gentiloni met twice with Turkish Finance Minister Mehmet Simsek over the past two weeks and said he was interested to hear the minister’s “positive messages both on the government’s economic plans and on Türkiye’s relations with the EU.”

EU foreign ministers signaled their readiness to work for closer ties with Türkiye last month, with the bloc noting that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had given the green light to Swedish membership of the NATO military alliance. Prior to backing Sweden’s accession, Erdogan linked Sweden’s NATO bid to Ankara’s efforts to join the EU - but EU accession is still off the table.

Senior EU officials have welcomed Türkiye’s efforts to restore relations with the EU as the country courts foreign investors to help boost its ailing economy and end a cost-of-living crisis partly caused by surging inflation.