Strasbourg, 15/01/2014 (Agence Europe) - Commissioner for Enlargement and European Neighbourhood Policy Stefan Füle met Turkey's new Minister for European Affairs and chief negotiator Mevlüt Cavusoglu for the first time in Strasbourg on 15 January. Füle described the meeting as “open and constructive” although Cavusoglu has recently criticised European remarks about judicial power in Turkey (see EUROPE 10990). Füle and Cavusoglu mostly discussed the ongoing Turkish reforms on the judiciary and the EU's concerns about the judiciary's independence and impartiality. Dozens of high ranking police resigned from their jobs on the orders of the Turkish government in the days following the questioning of people close to the government on accusations of fraud, corruption and money laundering.
While Cavusoglu informed Füle about the recent events (see EUROPE 10992), Füle reiterated what the European Commission expects from Turkey as an EU accession candidate country, and he said that Turkey should take “all the necessary measures to ensure that the recent allegations of corruption are handled without discrimination or preference in a transparent and impartial manner”. Any change to the judicial system must not call into question Turkey's commitment as regards the Copenhagen political criteria, Füle said, calling on Cavusoglu to pass this message on to the Turkish government. “The Commission will examine the arrangements in the last draft law on the judicial system in Turkey and will share its views with the Turkish authorities before any vote on the draft law”, Füle added.
Füle and Cavusoglu also agreed on the strategic links that unite the EU and Turkey - the anchor of which are the accession negotiations. Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is expected in Brussels on 21 January, where he will meet European Commission President José Manuel Barroso.
Greens call on Turkey to renounce ad hoc reforms. The co-chair of the Greens Group in the European Parliament, Daniel Cohn-Bendit, and the co-leader of the EU-Turkey joint parliamentary committee, Helène Flautre (Greens/EFA, France), called on Turkey to renounce its ad hoc reforms to the judicial system. They called on it to refrain from any intervention in the corruption affairs and to get back on the path of judicial reforms towards independent justice system, in close cooperation with the Council of Europe and the EU. In the opinion of Flautre and Cohn-Bendit, “political intervention in the judicial system is serious”. “Turkish democracy deserves better than ad hoc laws”, they added (our translation throughout). (CG/transl.fl)