On Thursday 30 July, Peter Stano, the spokesperson for the European External Action Service, described Turkey’s decision to issue a new Navtex (maritime information system) involving exploratory activities to the east of Cyprus as a “negative development”.
“Turkey’s decision to issue a new Navtex on Tuesday (28 July) for seismic surveillance in the Eastern Mediterranean is not at all helpful and overshadows an earlier announcement by the diplomatic adviser to the Turkish president (Tayyip Erdogan: editor’s note) that activities of this nature were being suspended”, Stano told the media.
“We have repeated on a number of occasions that Turkey must respect the sovereign rights of EU member states”, he added, and stated that a period of calm was required to allow work to continue and progress to be made on solutions that would benefit the Cypriot, Greek and Turkish communities.
Stano noted that Josep Borrell, the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, had met Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, the Turkish Foreign Minister, a few days earlier, and that both men had agreed on the need to reduce tensions.
Borrell was instructed by EU Foreign Ministers on 13 July to explore ways of easing tensions, and to prepare options for possible retaliatory measures (see EUROPE 12526/1).
Turkey will be one of the subjects discussed at the informal meeting of Foreign Ministers, the Gymnich, scheduled for 27 and 28 August in Berlin. (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant)