Luxembourg, 18/10/2005 (Agence Europe) - For more than a year now, the British NGO 'The Corner House', the Kurdish Human Rights Project charity and a land owner, Cememder Korkmaz, have been awaiting the continuation of case they have lodged against the European Commission at the European Court of First Instance. They call on the European Commission 'to recommend to the Council the freezing of pre-accession assistance pending a resolution of Turkey's failures to comply with the EU accession criteria identified by the Commission,' under the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan Pipeline Project Agreements entered into between Turkey and the oil companies behind the project, the BTC consortium headed by BP.
Legal experts comment that the trial is taking an unusually long time, the legal procedures being at a stand-still for nearly a year. If the trial had gone ahead as normal, a hearing and a public debate would have been held several months ago. Another solution could have been for the President of the Court of First Instance, Bo Vesterdorf, to have ruled that the case was clearly inadmissible (such rulings through their very nature are issued quickly). Observers tend to reject the idea of a conspiracy of silence, preferring explanations like technical problems, special treatment of a case deemed to be sensitive, or simple negligence.
The Corner House and the Kurdish Human Rights Project argue that 'under these agreements, the Turkish Parliament has created a 'prevailing legal regime' (un regime juridique predominant in French, Ed.) governing the territory and implementation of the Pipeline project and abrogating national laws to the benefit of the oil companies concerned. According to the applicants, this has caused access to justice and the right to land to be limited… including the impossibility of adopting the principle of supremacy of EC Law and a breach of the environmental impact assessment criteria.' The applicants claim the combination of agreements signed by Turkey with the oil companies create a corridor of exclusive jurisdiction for 60 years along the pipeline, where no environmental or other legislation can apply.
The applicants claim the Host Government Agreement (a private law contract with the characteristics of public law) between the Turkish government, BP and the other BTC companies includes a stabilisation clause for if the economic balance of the project is disrupted or negatively affected by fiscal or environmental changes in Turkish legislation. The applicants also criticise the environmental impact assessment foreseen in the Project Agreements, supposed to include measures from the 1985 European directive on the assessment of certain public or private projects, which the applicants views as falling short of requirements. The applicants claim Turkey has not made sufficient progress to meet the Copenhagen Criteria and should therefore no longer receive EU pre-accession aid. The court case also covers a series of grievances over, for example, access to justice, land rights and weakening of the Copenhagen Criteria. The case was lodged with the clerk of the European Court of First Instance on 2 January 2004 (see also EUROPE 8680).