CROATIA/TURKEY: ACCESSION TALKS RUN INTO EARLY POLITICAL DIFFICULTIES

European Report
March 28, 2006

Moves to open Croatia’s and Turkey’s EU membership negotiations on
education and culture are being held up by French-led calls to put
greater emphasis on the broader political entry criteria.

The European Commission said on February 14 the two countries were
ready to start talks on education and culture, but by 28 March member
states were still to take the step of asking the Austrian EU Presidency
to invite the candidates to submit their negotiating positions. The
invitation has already been sent for science and research, paving
the way for the start of membership negotiations proper.

Sources say France – evidently cautious about further EU enlargement
– supported by others including Cyprus and Greece, has called for
a reference to be made in the Presidency’s letter to the political
membership criteria, which require aspiring EU members to achieve
“stability of institutions guaranteeing democracy, the rule of law,
human rights and respect for and protection of minorities”.

But some member states are against the move, saying the political
criteria should not be mixed up in this way with detailed negotiations
on the EU’s acquis communautaire, or body of law. One view is that
there would be other fora and other more appropriate ‘chapters’ of
the talks to deal with political criteria, such as the chapter on
‘judiciary and fundamental rights’.

Diplomats said one possible compromise might be to somehow reflect
the French concerns in the cover note of the COREPER text asking the
Presidency to send out the letter. The Committee of Member States’
Permanent Representatives to the EU looked set to broach the matter
on 29 March.

The education and culture chapter was thought to be one of the ‘easy’
areas of the negotiations, given that it is primarily a matter
of national competence. But one EU source explained that it had
proved trickier than expected because it could touch on politically
sensitive questions such as the teaching of history, the role of women,
languages, minority rights or even the disputed Armenian genocide.

While the concerns about the political criteria appear to revolve
more around Turkey, Croatia is affected too because so far the two
countries have been moving in parallel – even though Croatia would
like to join by 2009 while many believe that Turkey’s talks could
last a decade or more.

Hints of frustration have already begun to emerge from Zagreb. “With
all due respect to Turkey, I think the moment will have to come real
soon when Croatia will have to separate from Turkey”, Croatia’s Prime
Minister Ivo Sanader said on 23 March. The accession process “could
go faster in some segments but at this moment everything is perhaps
a little too encumbered with political aspects”, he added.

EU sources say the Austrian Presidency is looking to schedule a
deputy-level accession conference, prospectively in May, with a view
to opening at least two chapters of the embryonic negotiations. That
could be followed by a ministerial conference in June.