Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/1999-12-14-Speech-2-074"
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"en.19991214.4.2-074"2
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"Mr President, needless to say, I am extremely pleased that the Council has confirmed the viewpoint which was also posited by the Commission, namely that the enlargement of the European Union will be a process in which all Central European countries which have applied for membership will be involved without any discrimination and on the basis of their own merits. I am pleased that the old biased approach is no longer being pursued. Although we used to be a European economic community, we now realise that the essence of our alliance is that we are a union of democratic constitutional States. This is a significant change in our way of thinking and reverts back to the original ideals of European integration. I think it is important that the Central and Eastern European countries should know that they are joining a smoothly-running Union. This is why it is so vital that we do our homework and that we cannot get out of it by some excuse like: are we not holding the candidate countries hostage to our reforms? Formulated in this way, it is viewed in completely the wrong manner because those who wish to offer the Central and Eastern European countries a heap of rubble generally tend to object to European integration.
Mr President, Turkey needs a great deal more attention and I am willing to allow for that. It has now been granted official candidate status. We have noted this with little enthusiasm. It appears that it is difficult to change Turkey’s political culture. The Turkish Government has already stipulated demands before Turkey can accept its Member State candidacy. This is the culture of brute force, the culture of the big mouth and not the type of culture that we want. Not from a Member State and certainly not from a candidate country.
In our opinion, the European Union should also make it very clear to Turkey that the treatment it will receive will certainly not be more flexible than that of Slovakia, for example, where the change-over from one government to another was, in fact, a great deal more relaxed. Turkey will have no choice but to make drastic changes and make steps towards the European Union. There is as yet no evidence of such steps being made. The European Union should not make the same mistake as the Council of Europe which accepted Turkey some time ago whilst Turkey blatantly contravened the criteria to become a member of the Council of Europe, such as the criteria relating to the protection of minorities and human rights.
Mr President, although it is said that Turkey falls outside the EU borders, in my view, the borders of the European Union coincide with those where democratic constitutional states exist. It is not so much a new territorial Yalta as an underlining of every effort to bolster the constitutional state."@en1
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