Copenhagen, 13/12/2002 (Agence Europe) - The leaders of the European People's Party, who met on Thursday afternoon at the Copenhagen Summit, could but note their divergence over Turkey. Although the French, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese Prime Ministers hope to give Turkey a "prognosis" for launching accession negotiations, the Germans of the CDU-CSU party and, to a lesser extent, the Dutch, Luxembourg members and Austrians are opposed to this (see yesterday's EUROPE, p.5).
EPP President Wilfried Martens did not therefore manage to have leaders of the party, which is now a majority in the European Union, adopt a declaration on the attitude to be taken toward Turkey. "You know the many opinions that exist within the EPP", he told the press after the meeting. "Turkey is accepted as a candidate country by the European Union; and we accept it", he added, noting that the German EPP members "consider it was a mistake" in Helsinki in 1999, to give Turkey this status when it did not fulfil the political criteria. All are therefore, at least officially, in agreement on this candidate status and on the fact that it will be necessary to closely assess the implementation of reforms and respect of criteria before agreeing on a date for starting negotiations. From there on, positions differ.
The EPP Summit focused on this question. "We spoke of nothing but Turkey, when there are so many other issues to be tackled", noted EPP Secretary General Antonio Lopez, who would have liked to "pass on the message that it is a summit about enlargement and not about Turkey". Speaking to the press for a few moments, Edmund Stoiber, the unfortunate CDU-CSU candidate to the post of German Chancellor, did not wish to raise the question of a date, indicating that it was necessary before anything else for Turkey to meet the membership criteria. Still on the subject of Turkey, Wilfried Martens noted that "a Prime Minister" had spoken of a "cost of EUR 20-30 billion annually" if it joined the Union.
The only declaration adopted by the EPP leaders related to maritime security. They deeply deplore the consequences of the "Prestige" oil tanker disaster, give their support to the volunteers who are cleaning the beaches, "express their determination to use every financial instrument available to the European Union to help limit the socio-economic consequences of the disaster" and stress that it is necessary to ensure similar disasters do not happen again.