Luxembourg, 28/09/2006 (Agence Europe) - The Turks are bringing a growing number of matters before the European Court of Justice and the European Court of First Instance. The most recent concern the Diy-Mar Insaat company which challenges the awarding of a contract by the European Commission delegation in Turkey for the construction of schools in the Diyarbakir and Siirt provinces. The company in question states that its offer was the best and that its dossier was complete.
Yedas Tarim, the company specialised in ball bearings for the motor industry, maintains that the Community had not kept a series of financial commitments in connection with Turkey's entry to the European Union - due in particular to opposition from Greece - and that it has the right to demand compensation from the European Community which, it states, is directly responsible for the fall in its turnover. The Court of First Instance had not followed up its request (see EUROPE 9203). The company is appealing before the Court of Justice.
The European courts have already examined and continue to examine more closely cases linked to the 1963 Association Agreement between the EC and Turkey. The House of Lords has submitted to the Court of Justice moot points that it considers fundamental, concerning the right of Turkish nationals to set up business in the EU. The House of Lords must judge the case of a Turkish national who entered the UK as a tourist, who had set up a shirt factory there and who had then initiated a request for his situation to be regularised.
Still more recently, a German court raised before the Court of Justice questions of interpretation of the EC/Turkey agreement and the Schengen Agreement in order to enact in a dossier concerning the right to stay in Germany of a lorry driver, whose vehicle was registered in Germany for a Turkish company.
Finally, it should be noted that the NGO, Corner House, and a Turkish association had disputed the payment of pre-accession aid because, in their view, in accordance with agreements between Turkey and the oil companies that set up the Baku-Ceyhan pipeline, a corridor several kilometres wide had been created to the exclusive benefit of the latter and to which none of the EU body of law - environmental or tax legislation - could apply during 60 years. The European Court of First Instance declared the appeal inadmissible.