Brussels, 24/06/2005 (Agence Europe) - Next Wednesday, the European Commission is to adopt its proposed mandate for accession negotiations with Turkey. The mandate will then be approved by the Member States, who will thus give the European Commission their priorities and red lines for the negotiations to be launched on 3 October, as decided on by the European Council of 17 December 2004. Although the Commission stresses that this is a "technical" document just a few pages long, and designed to remain confidential like any other negotiation mandate, this is still a politically highly sensitive issue, given the differences of opinion surrounding the further enlargement of the EU and the end-purpose of negotiations with Turkey.
It is expected that on Wednesday, the Commission will propose that the negotiation mandate will largely take up paragraph 23 of the conclusions of the European Council of last December, indicating that "the joint objective of the negotiations is accession", but that this is an "open process, the outcome of which cannot be guaranteed in advance". In case of failure, "it must be ensured that the candidate State in question is fully anchored into European structures by the strongest possible ties", which is another way of saying privileged partnership. The conclusions also refer to possible "long transition periods, derogations, specific arrangements or permanent safeguard clauses", particularly in the field of the free movement of persons, the structural policy and agriculture.
Furthermore, the Council will set conditions for certain chapters to be opened, for instance on customs union, alongside the usual objectives to be fulfilled before a chapter can be concluded. In the proposed negotiation mandate with Croatia, there was an increase from the 31 chapters on the previous negotiations on enlargement to 35, as various chapters which were deemed excessively weighty were separated into two, such as the one on agriculture, which was split up into "agriculture and rural development" and "food safety, veterinary and phyto-sanitary aspects". Logically, this is likely to be the same for Turkey.
On the same day, the Commission is to publish a communication to reinforce links between civil society in the Member States and the candidate countries, with Turkey as a priority. "This will not be a communication strategy with the publication of notices and brochures", but "support for projects carried out by the people", the Commission states.
The Presidency and Turkey are in the process of discussing the details for the signing of the protocol to extend the customs union agreement to the 10 new Member States, including Cyprus. Turkey, which hopes to play down the signing of this agreement, would prefer this to be done by an exchange of letters, rather than a signature ceremony, according to a diplomatic source. As we announced, Turkey is to add a unilateral declaration stating that this signature does not mean that it has decided to recognise the Republic of Cyprus. A Turkish source indicates that this signature could take place in July.