TURKEY APPEARS TO MISS OUT ON RAPID EU ACCESSION
Workpermit.com, UK
Nov 6 2006
The European Commission will decide this week if it will recommend
a partial suspension of Turkey’s membership negotiations for joining
the European Union. Turkey has failed in several key areas, including
failure to open up its ports to Cyprus and other trade issues.
This, on the heels of a new French law last month that makes it
illegal to deny that the deaths of 600,000 to 2 million Armenians
during 1915 – 1917 is genocide. The law equivocates denial with the
Jewish Holocaust during World War II.
Turkish law allows severe penalties for persons who refer to the
event as "genocide," or the equivalent, as being subversive of the
government of Turkey.
While this last is a rather dramatic example of differences that must
be resolved, it is by no means the only one.
The controversy is complex, with a number of strong arguments in
favour of Turkish accession as well as a number of equally strong
arguments against.
Economic and trade disputes are more likely to have the final word.
The European Commission President, Jose Manuel Barroso, and Olli Rehn,
Enlargement Commissioner, are considering a recommendation to suspend
three negotiating topics closely linked to the ports dispute.
Other commissioners are urging Brussels to send out a strong message:
that many more parts of the negotiations will be affected if Ankara
does not meet the EU’s demand. Austria wants the Commission to
distinguish Turkey’s case from that of Croatia, the other country
currently in EU membership negotiations.
France, Cyprus, Austria and Greece are all pushing for a tough
line with Turkey, with the UK championing efforts to keep the talks
on course.
"If the issue was just Turkey not opening its ports, that would
be one thing and you could just suspend three chapters," said an
EU diplomat. "But remember that the Commission will also report on
Wednesday that Turkey is not making progress on reforms. This is a
question of political control of the EU’s enlargement process."
Turkey’s prime minister appears ready to amend a controversial
article of the Turkish penal code that the Commission says inhibits
free speech. "We are ready for proposals to make article 301 more
concrete if there are problems stemming from it being vague," he said.
The Commission debate opens the way for a full-blooded EU dispute over
Turkey, which some officials fear could bring the entire negotiations
to a halt.
On Wednesday the Commission will also adopt a strategy paper for future
enlargement, which says that, before any new expansion takes place,
the EU will have to deal with its own institutional arrangements –
which were to have been decided by the ill-fated European constitution.
With the expansion of the European Union to the EU-27 on 01 January
this year, most EU States are ready to take a slower approach,
with a more structured and restrictive attitude toward new potential
accession states. Croatia, Turkey and the Ukraine look like they will
have to meet tougher standards to get a treaty, and then will likely
face more restriction internally from existing member States as the
economic changes begin to settle out.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
