BRUSSELS—European Union governments that are set to consider visa-free travel deals with Turkey, Ukraine and Georgia are weighing a new policy that would allow the bloc to quickly suspend or even scrap the arrangements, if need be, according to a Franco-German paper viewed by The Wall Street Journal.

EU governments soon will decide whether to move ahead with visa-free travel at a time when many Europeans are wary of mass migration. With the deals, more than 120 million people from neighboring countries would be free to start entering the bloc without visas in coming months.

On Thursday, senior member-state officials are expected to discuss the visa deals and appropriate safeguard mechanisms during meetings in Brussels.

The European Commission last week recommended a visa-free deal for Ukraine's 45 million citizens. Georgia won EU backing for its visa-free bid last month, but Kosovo has been told it still has work to do for its application to succeed.

Turkey, which has agreed to take back thousands of Syrian and other asylum seekers who cross from the country to Greece, has said its help with the migration crisis depends on whether the bloc agrees by the end of June to allow the country's 80 million citizens visa-free access to the EU.

The European Union's executive will report next week on Turkey's progress in fulfilling the requirements for Brussels' backing of its bid. EU officials say a positive assessment is likely.

The visa decisions come at a difficult moment for the bloc. Any step that could trigger an increase in illegal migration or ease access for people who pose security threats could create a fresh backlash against Brussels and governments that approve the decisions.

EU officials insist the visa-free agreements are low-risk. The visas last for only 90 days and don't give tourists any rights to work. According to an internal document produced by the European Commission, only 4.4% of short-stay Turkish visa applications in 2014 were refused, and there were only 8,270 Turkish citizens found illegally in the EU.

Current safeguards already allow for an agreement to be suspended for a short period of time and as a last resort if there is a surge in people from a non-EU country staying illegally; a big increase in unfounded asylum requests; or a jump in refusals by a country to take back migrants whose asylum claims are rejected.

Still, there is growing unease in some capitals, diplomats say, that the current safeguards aren't sufficient. ahead of such a big potential influx of future visitors. The process of suspending an agreement is currently "too cumbersome and difficult," said one senior diplomat. It takes too long and depends on one member state being prepared to publicly call for an agreement to be frozen. No visa-free deal has ever been suspended.

Ahead of Thursday's discussions among senior EU officials, the EU's most powerful countries, France and Germany, circulated a set of proposals to kick off what is likely to be a critical debate. The stronger the protection mechanism created, the more likely the visa-free bids are to win approval. However, the snapback mechanism could also trigger complaints by Ukraine, Turkey and others.

While diplomats said the paper is only a starting point for discussions, if adopted it would broadly expand member states' scope for suspending and potentially scrapping a visa-free deal. One diplomat, who is neither French nor German, said there is support for some form of snap-back mechanism from "a number of member states."

The paper says the current safeguard clause is not an "efficient mechanism" for suspending agreements. It proposes significantly reducing the European Commission's leeway for continuing an agreement when one of the safeguard criteria is breached.

Once a deal is signed, the paper says, the European Commission should report regularly on a range of other themes to judge whether the broader conditions for a visa-free deal are met. These could include "efficiency of the fight against corruption, organized crime, document fraud, illegal-border crossings and overall quality of cooperation in the field of readmission of irregular migrants," the paper says.

It suggests easing the process for triggering a suspension. If the safeguard conditions are triggered, it says, a majority of member states would be required to block the suspension—which would last for six months—rather than to approve the suspension. It would also allow the EU permanently and automatically to move back a country to the list of nations without visa-free access unless the problem that triggered the suspension was fixed.

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

April 27, 2016 20:35 ET (00:35 GMT)