On Wednesday 4 October, MEPs debated the next European Council on 19-20 October. Although the relationship with Turkey is on the agenda for this summit, the MEPs bypassed the subject in their debate, with no MEP speaking out for their group not mentioning Turkey. On several occasions, the Parliament called for Turkey's EU accession negotiations to be frozen.
The Parliament's rapporteur for Turkey, Kati Piri (S&D, Netherlands), nevertheless said it was "high time for the leaders to develop a clear strategy towards developments in the candidate countries", and she said that thus far the strategy was "see, wait and hope that the situation improves". In Piri's view, the European leaders should both be strict on values and also send a message to the Turkish people that the EU is ready to support democrats and civil society. Fabio Castaldo (EFDD, Italy) called for the accession negotiations to be closed. "It's a farce and not even the stakeholders believe in it any more", he said.
In terms of foreign policy, it is on the nuclear programme agreement with Iran that the leader of the EPP Group, Manfred Weber, put the spotlight. "It's important for us to bring all our support to [High Representative of the EU for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Federica] Mogherini and her team to defend the nuclear agreement with Iran", he said. In Weber's view, "it would be disastrous to open a new front like that with North Korea. These conflicts can have no military solution, and we hope Europe will speak loudly and clearly".
Several MEPs underlined defence, which will also be on the agenda for the European Council. Those who spoke out on behalf of their group were against European cooperation in this area. "Rather than speaking about more defence, let's stick to the defence of human rights and disarmament. Let's invest in human rights and not weapons", Dennis De Jong (GUE/NGL, Netherlands) stated.
Nicolas Bay (ENF, France) criticised the idea of permanent structured cooperation (PSC), on which the European Council is expected to give its opinion. "PSC is a desire to remove the sovereignty of nations on defence. There are significant disparities (...) sometimes diverging and contradictory interests. If we want to push towards cooperation for a hypothetical European defence, we will end up with the collective powerlessness of our nations", he warned. (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant)