Turkey sees a green light
On 14 February the European Parliament adopted a resolution for Turkey's Accession Partnership for EU membership. Thus, the legal and financial framework for the country's pre-accession preparations
was finally confirmed.
From here onwards Ankara is expected to publish a national programme outlining the pre-accession reforms to be taken. In other words, the road to accession is now in Turkey's hands.
In this respect, Enlargement Commissioner Günter Verheugen pointed out that the adopted resolution was the "most important development in the last decade in the EU's relations with Turkey." Meanwhile, the now real prospect of EU membership can prove the biggest incentive for undertaking the most difficult of reforms, Mr Verheugen hoped.
However, it can be argued that the most problematic aspects of Turkey's candidacy relate not so much to the past 50 years of state rule (as the official EU chant on Central and East Europe goes), but to much more deeply encoded societal trends. Consequently, an EU-friendly Turkey needs a strategy different from that of an EU-friendly Central and East Europe.
In addition, the European Parliament agreed to include Turkey in the instruments for financial assistance to candidate countries, namely the SAPARD and ISPA. Thus, Turkey can become the recipient of euro 177 million annually over the next few years.
At the same time, since the decision of the European Parliament is not binding, it might be the case that Turkey is left out of the SAPARD and ISPA for financial reasons Mr Verheugen suggested.
Poland not a burden for CAP
Poland's government released a report last week stating that, contrary to popular belief, the country's prospective membership will not burden the EU Common Agricultural Policy (CAP).
The CAP is one of the policies that paved the way for today's EU. As such it is heavily financed and of extreme political importance. Moreover, there have been long-standing fears that candidate states will bankrupt the CAP once they become members.
The current annual budget of CAP is euro 40 billion. According to the Polish government report, Poland will cost the CAP only euro three billion a year. The reason for this is in the way funds are allocated. Despite Poland's large number of farmers, CAP money is assigned depending on farm size, not number of farmers. Thus, because of the proudly defended traditional Polish farming, the size of farms in Poland is considerably smaller than that in agribusiness EU states.
On the other hand, the release of this report is voicing fears among a number of candidate states. Once they join the EU they will be subject to unfair competition because there are no planned direct CAP subsidies for the new members.
In this way, this report is a call for reconsideration of the planned CAP of an enlarged EU. And it is not surprising that it has come out of the largest candidate state who, assumingly, poses the greatest danger to the future of CAP.
Ivana Gogova and Branimira Radoslavova,
16 February 2001
Moving on:
Sources:
The Financial Times
EurActiv.com
Today's updated headlines from the EU
Powered by moreover.com
Read CER's review of
last week's news from the EU
Read CER's review of
last week's news from the EU
Return to CER front page
