'We have had great support from Turkish authorities to make sure people can cross easily, get connecting flights from eastern part of country to international airport,' EU official says
The EU has received significant support from Türkiye in facilitating the evacuation of EU citizens from Iran amid escalation between Tel Aviv and Tehran, an EU official said on Thursday.
Christian Berger, director of the European External Action Service (EEAS) Crisis Response Center, praised Türkiye's role in enabling smooth land crossings and onward travel. "We have had great support from the Turkish authorities to make sure that people can cross easily and then get connecting flights from the eastern part of the country to the international airport," he told reporters in Brussels.
Due to the absence of an EU delegation in Tehran, Berger said the bloc has faced limitations on the ground and is relying on coordination led by the rotating EU presidency, currently held by Poland. "We are a little bit handicapped in Iran because we have no delegation in Tehran," he said.
Over the past three days, several evacuation convoys have successfully crossed land borders into Türkiye, Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Turkmenistan, he noted, without providing an exact number of evacuees.
- Syria
Touching on the broader EU stance on Syria, Berger said the country remains a major issue for the bloc due to its geopolitical importance and humanitarian challenges.
"Indeed, the sanctions have now been lifted, not only by us but also by the United States,” he said, emphasizing that the change is particularly important for commercial operators. He noted that businesses had long been reluctant to engage in Syria due to fears of secondary US sanctions, similar to the hesitancy seen after the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.
Berger added that while the lifting of sanctions is a step forward, it will still take time for commercial actors to feel secure enough to invest. "This is a commercial risk that a company should take,” he said, adding that the EU's goal is to help revive the Syrian economy, particularly to create conditions for people displaced by the civil war to return.
"We have done whatever we could to lift the sanctions, to make sure that the Syrian economy can pick up again, a to allow people to return," he added.
