Fischler challenges EU plans for Turkey

Commissioner Franz Fischler believes
that the EU should consider offering a “special partnership
status” to Turkey as an alternative to opening membership
negotiations.

In a nine-page letter circulated among members of the
Commission, Agriculture Commissioner Franz Fischler is
reportedly urging the EU to devise an alternative plan to
opening membership talks with Turkey. 

According to Fischler’s letter quoted
by the Financial Times, the EU should subject the
potential consequences of Turkey’s accession to careful
scrutiny before finalising its decision. “There remain
doubts as to Turkey’s long-term secular and democratic
credentials,” Fischler said. “There could […] be a
fundamentalist backlash”. 

Fischler has proposed that the EU draw
up a “plan B, addressing the best ways to help Turkey
keep up the reform momentum [such as] a special
partnership status”. 

In a recent statement, Internal Market
Commissioner Frits Bolkestein has also highlighted the
Commission’s divisions over Turkey’s EU bid. Bolkestein
has warned that “After the accession of Turkey, the EU
will not be able to continue its current agriculture and
regional policies. Europe would implode”. (see 
EURACTIV 7 September 2004

) 

Meanwhile, at a breakfast meeting of
the EPC (European Policy Centre ) on 9 September,
Commissioner for Foreign Policy Chris Patten distanced
himself from the negative comments made by Frits
Bolkestein on Turkey. 

Reminding the audience of the
atrocities committed in Europe in the thirties and
forties, Patten warned against the “deeply worrying”
narcissistic notion that values expressed in the
Copenhagen criteria are somehow explicitly ‘European’.
“We trampled on these values with more spectacular
ferocity than most,” Patten said, adding that one must
see Turkey’s membership in a perspective where both the
Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and regional policy will
inevitably have to be changed. 

While there appear to be no doubts
about the outcome of the Commission’s recommendation due
out on 6 October [ie Turkey is expected to receive the
green light to begin accession talks], Commission sources
say that at least six members of the EU executive remain
sceptical about Turkey’s EU membership. The Commission’s
ultimate decision requires simple majority
support. 

Read more with Euractiv

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