Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-11-15-Speech-3-118"
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"en.20001115.4.3-118"2
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"What the Morillon report shows us is quite simply the fact that we are still paying for the absurdity of the decision adopted at the European Summit meeting in Helsinki which regarded Turkey, on an equal footing with Poland, as a fully European country destined to join the European Union with all the practical implications this entails (pre-accession strategy and so on). I remember the exact text of the conclusions of the Presidency in Paragraph 12: “Turkey is a candidate country destined to join the Union on the basis of the same criteria as applied to candidate countries”.
We all know that, in reality, this decision was tainted with hypocrisy. Nonetheless, the system that has been put in place will do its work and will impose its logic on us until the time comes when this awkward position will become so untenable that our relations with Turkey will be in serious and deep crisis.
But, some might say, we can make the pleasure last, we can multiply the conditions and infinitely draw out the Copenhagen criteria in order to delay the moment when we have to take up the subject of the free movement of workers with Turkey.
Such ulterior motives are unworthy of Europe and unworthy of Turkey. In our relations with the Turkish nation and the great Turkish people, we must use the language of frankness and respect, not a double talk which opens the door to the worst kind of disappointment and unacceptable humiliation.
It is absolutely not a question of pushing Turkey away from Europe, as Cohn-Bendit claims. It is simply a question of recognising that geography and history have made present-day Turkey a country that is not European. In the face of stark realities, it is about fully respecting the dignity of the Turkish people by not seeking to impose on it a behaviour which it must adopt of its own accord, and by seeking to jointly develop close cooperation.
The ambiguity of the pre-accession procedure prevents real cooperation between Turkey and Europe from developing along healthy and clear lines, even if there is a powerful common interest for Turkey – with its influence and weight and the privileged relations it now has with the Turkish-speaking countries of central Asia – to be a powerful stabilising factor in a region which is in great need of stability."@en1
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