One Consequence Of The German Elections

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In an early comment on Sunday evening I ventured the view that at least “One thing at least seems clear: negotiations with Turkey for full membership are now very likely to start on October 3”.

Well Lo and Behold, and just as theory predicted, the EU Obsever announce this morning:

Member states’ envoys yesterday removed a major hurdle standing in the way of Turkish EU entry talks as they reached agreement on an EU counter-statement to Ankara’s non-recognition of Cyprus.

“The deal is done, the text of the declaration has been agreed upon”, said a UK presidency diplomat on Monday evening (20 September) according to Reuters, after a lengthy ambassadors meeting in Brussels.

“……according to press reports, the Cypriots backed down as Monday’s compromise text states only that Turkey must recognise Cyprus before it accedes to the EU – and does not set a specific date for the move. The deal hammered out by EU ambassadors is set to be approved by EU foreign ministers on Tuesday (20 September) – which would make a special ministers meeting on the matter later this month unnecessary.”

Surprising that this couldn’t have been decided last Friday, now isn’t it.

This entry was posted in A Fistful Of Euros, Transition and accession and tagged by Edward Hugh. Bookmark the permalink.

About Edward Hugh

Edward 'the bonobo is a Catalan economist of British extraction. After being born, brought-up and educated in the United Kingdom, Edward subsequently settled in Barcelona where he has now lived for over 15 years. As a consequence Edward considers himself to be "Catalan by adoption". He has also to some extent been "adopted by Catalonia", since throughout the current economic crisis he has been a constant voice on TV, radio and in the press arguing in favor of the need for some kind of internal devaluation if Spain wants to stay inside the Euro. By inclination he is a macro economist, but his obsession with trying to understand the economic impact of demographic changes has often taken him far from home, off and away from the more tranquil and placid pastures of the dismal science, into the bracken and thicket of demography, anthropology, biology, sociology and systems theory. All of which has lead him to ask himself whether Thomas Wolfe was not in fact right when he asserted that the fact of the matter is "you can never go home again".

4 thoughts on “One Consequence Of The German Elections”

  1. I know that the blogger goes to war with the information that one has at the time, but apparently things aren’t quite as smooth with the pre-negotiations deal on Cyprus as first appeared:

    Ministers from EU member states have failed to approve a declaration that would allow talks on Turkish accession to begin next month.
    The text agreed by diplomats on Monday was pulled from the agenda of ministers meeting in Brussels at Cyprus’ request.

    It says Turkey must formally recognise Cyprus before joining the EU.

    Diplomats quoted by Reuters said Cyprus did not object to the text itself but was delaying approval until agreement on a negotiating mandate for the talks.

  2. Hi P O’Neill

    Well, obviously never say never. But my reading is that the big obstacle which was overcome was the doubt about ‘partnership’ rather than membership.

    Thus the real ‘reservation’ was actually coming from Austria rather than Cyprus. Now it is clear Austria won’t have German support, and won’t push the issue very hard.

    There will always be cliff hanging with the Turkey negotiations, since this is what Turkey does normally it seems, and the EU diplomats will work to get the maximum concessions.

    To a certain extent this is all game playing, since Turkey *will* have to recoginise Cyprus in order to join the EU, that is obvious. Whether this comes before or after a definitive attempt to solve the issue of future of the Turkish part of the Island is the only real issue. I don’t think the *negotiations* need not to start on this.

    At present the issue of getting free access to Turkish ports for Cyprus ships is the first step and I hope they are near a deal on this. If they aren’t I guess those negotiations will proceed very slowly.

    At the same time Cyprus is in no position to insist very hard in being obstructionist, since they obviously depend on the good will of the other 24 for lots of things. Remember Cyprus politicians also have to play to the gallery at home.

    Bottom line, despite all the protests to the contrary, Turkey has a big interest in seeing these negoatiations move forward, and I imagine they will.

  3. “There will always be cliff hanging with the Turkey negotiations, since this is what Turkey does normally it seems”

    Commenting on myself, and Cyprus too.

    A Cypriot spokesman told the EUobserver that a UK presidency proposal was still “being studied”, however.The delay sparked press reports saying that the Cypriots intended a last-minute veto of the text.

    But diplomats commented that the delay was due to the fact that Cypriot president Tassos Papadopoulos had to read the text before he approved it and that he was travelling most of the day. One diplomat noted that the Cypriot president said he expects entry talks with Ankara to start as scheduled on 3 October – signalling approval of the text.

    http://euobserver.com/9/19902

  4. Well my pragmatic cynicism seems to have been justified. The FT today:

    The European Union on Wednesday took a decisive step towards opening membership negotiations with Turkey when the bloc’s 25 governments reached agreement on Turkey’s relationship with Cyprus after almost a month of discussion.

    For weeks the fate of the membership talks, scheduled to begin on October 3, has been uncertain because of a backlash against EU enlargement and concerns voiced by France, Greece, Cyprus and Austria.

    But Wednesday’s deal, reached at an EU ambassadors meeting in Brussels, met Greece and Cyprus’s chief demand by calling on Turkey to move towards normal relations with Nicosia, and satisfied France by emphasising the limits of the EU’s capacity to absorb new member states.

    At Wednesday’s meeting, the EU ambassadors agreed most of the chief issues concerning the mandate for the negotiations with Ankara talks that could last 10 years or more.

    http://news.ft.com/cms/s/d0f3e6fa-2ad5-11da-817a-00000e2511c8.html

    Austria still seesm to be holding out for something, but this doesn’t seem to present an insurmountable hurdle.

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