Brussels, 10/05/2016 (Agence Europe) - On Tuesday 10 May, Maja Kocijancic, the spokesperson for High Representative of the EU for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Federica Mogherini, announced that the high level dialogue meeting between the EU and Turkey, which was initially due to take place in Brussels on Friday 13 May, “has been rescheduled to a later date that still needs to be agreed”.
Kocijancic stated that the decision to postpone the meeting had been taken jointly with the Turkish authorities. According to a European source, “both parties agreed that the timing was not the best” - with the announcement on 5 May that Turkey's Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu would resign from his post. Stating that meetings were needed where it was possible to take decisions, this source said that it was important to wait until the Turkish government has a full mandate. “How can a work plan be confirmed if there is no prime minister?” the source added. The high level dialogue was due to bring together Mogherini, European Commissioner for Neighbourhood Policy and Enlargement Negotiations Johannes Hahn, and Turkey's ministers for foreign affairs and European affairs - Mevlut Cavusoglu and Volkan Bozkir respectively.
According to the same European source, the dialogue could take place “in a few weeks”.
The last high level dialogue was held in Ankara on 25 January (see EUROPE 11475). At that time the EU and Turkey had discussed enlargement issues, the migration crisis, the customs union and counter-terrorism. (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant)