Common sense needed. Last week's visit to Istanbul by European Commissioners Karel De Gucht and Stefan Füle consolidated the turn in the right direction in relations between the EU and Turkey -abandoning the idea of accession and expanding and strengthening relations and cooperation by other means. The two articles in our publication (EUROPE 10498) are clear about this. The welcome given by the Turkish business community and civil society with regard to the Agenda proposed by the Commission in the face of the stalled accession negotiations was encouraging, Mr Füle noted, in the explicit objective of adding a new impetus to reciprocal ties between the two sides.
Mr De Gucht provided the details. Turkey is the EU's seventh biggest trading partner: the EU buys almost 50% of Turkish exports and provides 80% of all direct investment. Nonetheless, there is still enormous potential for expanding economic relations because the current customs union between the two parties only covers merchandise and negotiations to extend it to services and public procurement have been frozen since 2002. Progress is expected in both these areas and cooperation is expected to develop in other areas too. There is an underlying understanding that this progress should be made without giving too much concern to a theoretical accession that has in any case been blocked. Yet everything would suggest that the Turkish authorities are not making the slightest effort to unblock things.
Obviously, Turkey will not formally withdraw the accession project in exchange for substantial alternatives. Nonetheless, its political line - be it in regard to “its” part of Cyprus or through its initiatives in the Arab world and eastern regions of the former Ottoman Empire - clearly indicates its wish to maintain its autonomy. Turkey has no intention at all of having to go through Community procedures and institutions to take action. The Kurdish issue is an altogether different problem, which, in the event of accession would become a Community question in which the EU would have to carefully avoid becoming too involved.
Rhetoric will always have its partisans and talk of accession will therefore not entirely disappear. Several EU bodies always strive to support accession with vigour, oblivious to what this would mean for funding cohesion policies and the common agricultural policy. But those who, on both sides, understand the situation have pushed the question of accession to one side and are now focusing on more realistic and efficient forms of Euro-Turkish cooperation. The Agenda presented in Istanbul by the two European commissioners has made this orientation into an almost official position.
Greece: VGE understood completely. Finally! I can now draw on the example of Valéry Giscard d'Estaing (a key player in his time of the Greek affair) to stress how important it is not to confuse the twofold situation existing in Greece - on the one hand it is an EU member state and on the other it is a member of the eurozone. These two factors have been too often mixed up! The Community institutions and the national authorities have been submerged with criticism and accused of seeking to cast the birthplace of European civilisation outside the EU!
In actual fact, nobody at all is imagining committing this kind of crime - Greece will remain within the EU and will benefit from increased support. VGE indeed wanted Greece to join but quickly realised that it would be a “serious mistake” to allow the country to join the single currency.
His interview last week with a journalist from Le Monde is very clear and explicit on this point. On 28 May 1979, as acting president of the European Community (this was the name of the EU at the time), VGE signed the act that admitted Greece into the EU after having fought for this out of principle, even though certain conditions had not been entirely fulfilled: “the country was disorganised, its democracy still not yet solidly in place, it had no common border with other member states and the misgivings in the institutions and other member states were manifold”. VGE, however, considered it was a political decision: “Greece was synonymous with culture; the idea that the country be left outside the door of Europe was intolerable”. Nonetheless, a few years later he said that the decision to allow Greece to join the single currency was a “serious mistake”. How can this be rectified? “The solution of leaving the euro is still an option, which does not mean leaving the EU at all, despite what Brussels has mistakenly stated. Returning to the drachma is feasible, even though it will undoubtedly be difficult. Greece would thus have the right again to devalue its currency. What should be done for it to kick-start its growth? Implementation measures are not going in this direction”. The conclusion is: “Greece accounts for a 1.3 thousandth of the world's population. There is no reason at all to make this into a global issue”. This is one way of saying, with an eye on the financial community, that the complications are partly fictitious. (FR/transl.fl)