Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-09-28-Speech-3-011"
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"en.20050928.3.3-011"2
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".
Mr President, Mr President-in-Office of the Council, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, the additional protocol, like so many other issues around the beginning of negotiations with Turkey, raises what is very much a point of principle, that being the question of whether a candidate for accession is willing to accept all the parts of that entity of which it desires to become a member, or, to put it another way, whether it recognises all the Member States.
In December last year, the Commission put to the Council the proposition that recognition in international law was not necessary at the present time, but that the signature of the additional protocol on customs union between the EU of 25 and Cyprus would be sufficient. Turkey did comply with this requirement, albeit with a unilateral declaration that made it at least questionable whether the protocol would be implemented. The Council responded to this with a statement to the effect that this was quite simply not valid in either political or legal terms. Our Committee, though, asked the Commissioner, orally on 13 September and in writing on 15 September, to make his good offices available to us, and he agreed to do so. To date, we have had no response to the question as to whether the Turkish Government intends to include this unilateral declaration in the process of ratification by that country’s parliament. The fact is that, as and when this is made something that the Turkish parliament needs to ratify, thereby making Turkey’s non-implementation of it a matter of law, that presents us with a problem. I therefore invite you, before we proceed to the vote, to provide the Committee on Foreign Affairs with the statement it has requested, and which is mentioned in the joint resolution.
We should make it clear that it is Turkey that is asking to join the European Union and not – contrary to the impression I sometimes get – we who are inviting it to join us. We must not lose sight of the fact that the joint statement, as submitted by the groups, attaches a great deal of importance to the additional protocol actually being put into effect. If we are to address this problem, we would be well advised to negotiate the chapter on customs union by 2006 at the latest and conclude negotiations on it by the end of that year, in order that this issue – which also has a bearing on the recognition of Cyprus – can be speedily resolved and that we do not end up negotiating with Turkey without the prospect of this fundamental issue being resolved. For that reason, we agree with the Commissioner and the President-in-Office that we will need, in future, to again avail ourselves of the good offices of the United Nations in order to resolve the Cyprus conflict as a whole.
Perhaps I might be permitted a few personal observations. Yesterday, somebody asked me why it is that torture in Turkey – of which there are thousands of instances – is not a fit subject for debate, while an unresolved issue about a general can stand in the way of negotiations with Croatia. I have to admit that I was unable to come up with an answer to that. We should be honest in the way we do politics, taking care not to use arguments as pretexts for our own subjective political ends; instead, we need to be very clear and honest in stating where we stand on this issue. One reason why the resolution submitted by the groups in this House is so important is that we also need to make it clear that one criterion that must be met is the European Union’s capacity for absorbing new Member States – both as an end in itself, and because it raises questions about what is financially possible, what is actually practicable, and what the institutions are capable of handling. I would like to see the Council and the Commission, in these weeks and months, apply to the period of reflection on the Constitution the same consistent effort that they are devoting to Turkey’s accession. Then we might make some headway on this issue of absorbency.
We must not lose sight of the fact – which the groups’ resolution makes clear – that it is for us in this European Parliament to state that the conditions are formally met – in contrast to their form of words, which refers to ‘sufficiently fulfilled’ – and that issues of minority rights, issues relating to the processes of reform within Turkey, and the freedom of religion issue have a major part to play in this. This summer, the Commissioner exchanged letters with the Turkish foreign minister on the subject of the Law on Foundations, in the course of which the foreign minister rejected the improvements that the Commissioner had suggested, and stated that such things were a matter for the parliament, and then only after 3 October. Issues of pluralism, tolerance and freedom of religion, not to mention the right of the Orthodox Church to train its own priests, which it has been unable to do since 1971, are, after all, issues of substance touching on the European Union’s understanding of its own values and should be given prominence in the early months of the negotiating process.
As I see it – and this is true of Turkey and of many other countries – the prospect of membership of the European Union has an important part to play in these areas. It exerts crucial leverage in getting internal reform processes going in such countries as those in the Western Balkans, Ukraine and Turkey, and it is for that reason that we should never shut the door on them. We also, however, need to be realistic and open-minded, not only about the results we expect from negotiations, but also about the ends we have in view."@en1
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