By Anne-France White - 8th October 2006
The EU must change tack on Turkey or risk a breakdown of the current accession negotiations, Günter Verheugen has warned.
“Europe sends Turkey almost exclusively negative signals,” the European commissioner told the ‘Bild am Sontag’ newspaper.
“We are focusing on the country’s weaknesses and not encouraging them to change. This is feeding into a growing reluctance in Turkey to achieve the reforms we are calling for.”
“This is a dangerous spiral that threatens to trigger a global political failure of the highest order.”
Verheugen’s comments come amid a growing row about Turkish accession in the German left-right coalition
Angela Merkel, who has just returned from a visit to Turkey, was an outspoken opponent of Turkish accession before she became chancellor.
While she has said she will honour the EU’s commitments to Ankara, she has made it clear that she and her CDU party would prefer a “privileged partnership” with Ankara to full EU membership.
Arguing that “Europe must know where its borders lie”, Merkel said in her latest weekly podcast that the accession negotiations must be conducted in an open-ended way and are not inevitably tied to EU accession.
“We are conducting negotiations with Croatia and Turkey, but we also know that we cannot take on any more member states for the foreseeable future,” she said, referring to the need for institutional reform.
Merkel’s SPD coalition partners, in contrast, have spoken out strongly in favour of accession in an increasingly divisive debate.
“It would be a disastrous mistake to slam the door in Turkey’s nose,” said SPD chief Kurt Beck, adding that Turkey deserves a “fair chance at membership”.
Enlargement commissioner Olli Rehn, meanwhile, said in a speech on the eve of Merkel’s Turkey trip that “the regular talk of privileged partnership only erodes the EU’s credibility and weakens the conditionality in Turkey”.
Opinions on Turkish accession among Berlin government circles are being watched closely on the eve of the German presidency of the EU, which kicks off in January 2007.
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