The European Union on Wednesday described Türkiye as a "key" partner in various fields amid a recent thaw with archrival Greece while ruling out any possibility of resuming accession talks any time soon.

"It’s a necessity to revive Türkiye’s membership process and follow a positive agenda that should lay the foundations of a new beginning in relations," European commissioner in charge of neighborhood and enlargement policy Oliver Varhelyi told reporters in Brussels following a meeting on EU Enlargement.

"The European Council remains committed to maintaining an open and frank dialogue, to addressing common challenges and to cooperating in essential areas of joint interest, such as migration, public health, climate, counterterrorism and regional issues," the council later said in a statement but was careful to note the stalemate in Turkish membership process would persist.

The bloc, however, welcomed the recent improvements in relations between Türkiye and Greece, saying the expectation is for it to be sustainable to deescalate tensions in the Eastern Mediterranean.

NATO allies and Aegean neighbors, Türkiye and Greece have been striving to open a fresh page in long-strained ties in recent months, which marked a considerable mutual drop in harsh rhetoric. The pair signed a friendship declaration, among over a dozen cooperation agreements, during President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s landmark visit to Athens last week.

Since Erdoğan secured another five-year term in the May elections, the EU has been willing to reengage with Türkiye but stopped short of offering Ankara a clear resumption of membership talks.

Türkiye has been a candidate for EU membership for more than two decades, but talks stalled in 2016 over what Ankara says is the bloc’s "insistence on politicizing the issue."

The division of the island of Cyprus between its Greek and Turkish Cypriot populations, a source of friction between Greece and Türkiye, has also been made an impediment by the EU.

Efforts to reunify the Mediterranean island, which has been divided since 1974 following a Turkish military operation as a guarantor power of the island against a Greek military coup and annexation, have been at a standstill since the last round of U.N.-backed talks collapsed in 2017.

The European Council on Wednesday called for a relaunch of U.N. negotiations, which have been continuing unsuccessfully for six decades, to settle the Cyprus problem, and urged Türkiye to contribute to the process. Ankara doesn’t recognize the Greek Cypriot administration, which controls the southern part of the island, as a state. The Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) and Türkiye have said there can now only be a two-state solution and negotiations cannot restart without recognizing the "sovereign equality and equal international status" of the Turkish Cypriots.

The council accused Türkiye of "moving away" from the EU through foreign policies "colliding with EU priorities," as well.

Turkish-EU ties have recently suffered another uneasy block after Israel launched a brutal bombing campaign on the blockaded Gaza Strip on Oct. 7 so far killing 18,200 Palestinians. Ankara doesn’t consider the Palestinian resistance group Hamas to be a terrorist organization, unlike the EU, and has repeatedly voiced support for its liberation efforts.

As for the prickling issue of migration, the council praised concrete results achieved by the 2016 deal with Ankara, in which the bloc gave Türkiye billions of euros to stop migrants from coming to Europe after the 2015 refugee crisis, and urged Türkiye to "resume returns and prevent irregular arrivals."

Migration is a headache for the EU, which sees droves of asylum-seekers on its easternmost borders, notably Greece, every year. Most of these refugees attempt to make the perilous crossing from Türkiye to the Greek islands, and violent treatment and pushbacks have only increased in recent years.

With the Athens-Ankara rapprochement, Greece too is hoping a revival of the deal will ease the influx of irregular migrants.

But the EU's tolerance of terrorist groups like the PKK and the Gülenist Terror Group (FETÖ), which maintain widespread support across especially western Europe, angers Ankara.

The bloc has welcomed an offer by Erdoğan to revive relations earlier this year but for many member states, the accession talks are dead in all but name.

In September, Austria, long opposed to Türkiye's membership, even called for the process to end. EU officials privately say this would be more honest, but no one wants to make the first move.

The EU's executive arm and foreign policy chief is set to prepare a report on how to develop the relationship, which is due before the next gathering of EU leaders later this month, but experts and EU officials warn against expecting any real improvement in ties.