Link between EU development and Turkish accession. How many more years of debate will there be on Turkey's EU accession prospects? The debate has been ratcheted up a notch over recent weeks, in particular following the Commission's annual report on the state of progress of negotiations, the joint declaration made by the Italian and Turkish ministers for foreign affairs and the visit by Mr Cohn-Bendit to Ankara.
As I see it, the situation has been clear for a long time. Turkish accession is possible and even desirable if deepening of the EU is being blocked. It is inappropriate and even impossible if European construction is moving towards the objectives that Mr Cohn-Bendit himself is advocating (for which he has been valiantly fighting) including, notably: European foreign policy; consolidation of Common Agricultural Policy and of Cohesion Policy and institutional enhancement. These objectives and many others would be compromised if Turkey became a member state. This large country: a) would have a dominating institutional weight within the EU (voting rights at the Council and number of MEPs at the EP that would be greater than any other member state, which would be reinforced by the country's democratic perspectives); b) it would be by far the greatest beneficiary of cohesion policy (several current beneficiary member states would lose their status in this respect); c) EU progress towards a common external policy would become largely impossible because Turkey would introduce several Asian dossiers into this domain, beginning with the Kurdish question, a people that has been demanding its autonomy (in Iraq, it has been largely obtained).
Developments in favour of co-operation. Turkey is currently becoming a major economic power (this year, its growth has been evaluated at 7%) and on the political level, it is aiming to become part of the group of emerging giants, together with Brazil and India. It has just signed free-trade agreements with Iraq and the Lebanon, which is incompatible with the EU's trade policy. The most recent poll indicated that only 38% of the Turkish population is in favour of EU accession.
Public opinion in Europe is going in the same direction. The French parliament has voted against including aid in the EU's next budget, to help Turkey prepare for accession. Some political forces advocate a referendum on the EU as a whole on the question of Turkish accession. Frontex has decided to deploy European border guards to carry out surveillance of the Greek-Turkish border, the main passage point for illegal immigrants. The most recent Commission report calls on Turkey to make further efforts in order to meet accession conditions.
At the same time, links between the EU and Turkey are developing: efficient customs union; increasing economic co-operation, especially in the energy arena; and increasing EIB funding for projects of common interest. Reservations regarding Turkish accession do not imply that these links are scaled down, on the contrary. Accession complicates everything, whereas cooperation, including political cooperation, can develop in conditions that correspond to the common interest and genuine wishes of the EU and Turkey's respective populations.
An interpretation of the military cooperation agreement between France and the United Kingdom. This agreement and the intentions of those who concluded it, give rise to different interpretations. Our specialist publication Europe Diplomacy & Defence saw it as a serious blow to all military cooperation projects at the Community level. This column explained (EUROPE 10255) that the agreement could leave the door open to developments within the EU framework. Other interpretations have been added to it. The following interpretation struck me the most. The United Kingdom does not see the objective of this agreement as reorganising and rationalising European nuclear forces by reducing the cost and improving cooperation but rather as definitively consolidating Europe's dependency on the US in this domain. Why? Because British nuclear forces are mainly represented by US bombs and missiles and can never be used without the go-ahead from Washington. The new agreement would therefore constitute the extended return of France into NATO. Already accomplished on the level of conventional forces, this would therefore be extended to the nuclear arsenal. The British initiative would therefore not have the objective or the result of enhancing military co-operation in Europe but rather of consolidating the nuclear dimension in NATO, which is dominated by the US.
I will leave it up to the specialists to interpret these assessments as they wish. I will simply outline them without, however, giving up hope that European cooperation in defence can, despite all this, continue to develop, taking into account a number of the comments made in our publication quoted above. (F.R.)