Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-04-11-Speech-2-253"
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"en.20000411.9.2-253"2
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".
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I would like to thank all the Members of the European Parliament for their contributions to this debate. I have not interpreted their opinions and points of view as giving a red light to this policy, which says ‘no, this policy is wrong and we want a different one. We want to deny Turkey the right ever to join the European Union’. No! Nobody said that! And this is something upon which we agree. I considered the speeches to be demanding ones, calling for the whole process to be scrutinised thoroughly. The European Parliament obviously has an important role to play in this. Turkey will not be admitted to the European Union without the European Parliament’s approval.
Well, the decisions made at Helsinki are demanding ones, with clear benchmarks, and we are not currently negotiating Turkey’s accession to the European Union. Turkey has merely been recognised as a candidate. In fact, as long ago as 1963, the Ankara Agreement established the possibility that Turkey might join the European Union, with the association agreement to evolve through an initial stage, a transitional stage and a final stage. The Copenhagen criteria are clear and Turkey must not be discriminated against, either positively or negatively. Furthermore, the very fact that we are currently making good progress with the planned enlargement of the Union to include Central and Eastern Europe enables us to prove that Turkey is not being discriminated against. On the contrary, it is being given equal treatment, in the sense that it must comply with a body of legislation, it must amend its own laws and it must behave in the same way in this process as the other countries that have applied for membership.
I can tell you that the Commission is not carrying out an assessment even now. This has not yet started, but the Commission has been instructed to prepare it. The Commission is involved in bilateral discussions with Turkey in order to provide it with information on the
. We have not even moved to the negotiating stage in which the assessment will be undertaken in a multilateral context, with the participation of all countries. We are, therefore, at an exploratory stage. We are giving Turkey powerful messages about the need for it to reform itself through its institutions, its laws and its administrative procedures. We in the Association Council have been very strict with Turkey and Turkey has, to some extent, recognised shortcomings and has stated its willingness to improve them, in particular with regard to laws governing the press, criminal law and the way in which citizenship rights are recognised, specifically in the cultural and language fields. I think that here too, real progress has been made, although perhaps not progress which has a clear legal form yet. There have also been steps backwards and we have expressed our deep disappointment at the fate of the leader of one of the most representative human rights organisations, and that of certain council leaders and politicians who have recently been arrested.
It is obvious that the Turkish political process is a complex one. However, something that can be acknowledged today is that, contrary to what used to happen in crisis situations, when Turkey was always tempted to use military power or to use extremist internal forces, thanks to the guidelines and the frameworks that were laid down in Helsinki, this strategy has contributed in Turkey to the consolidation of pro-European forces, which will, of course, have to develop a completely pro-European programme in terms of constitutional reform, political changes and new legislation. Criticism must be levelled at the Turks, not in order to prevent them from continuing in this process, but we must monitor the situation closely so that they can implement the changes necessary for this process to continue successfully."@en1
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