Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-12-13-Speech-1-062"
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"en.20041213.10.1-062"2
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".
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I am able to start my speech by saying something positive: Mr Eurlings’ report is in every respect more nuanced than Mr Poettering’s speech. Let me say on behalf of those of my colleagues who have worked with him in the Committee on Foreign Affairs that the rapporteur has taken a great deal of trouble to achieve a broad consensus, and in that he has succeeded. I see the outcome of the vote in the Committee on Foreign Affairs as having showed that the line he took in this report – with the addition of elements contributed by our group – has resulted in a broad consensus which can also serve as the basis for a similarly broad consensus here in the plenary, and in that there are three significant points on which our group vigorously dissociates itself from what Mr Poettering has said today.
Firstly, why is it so simple for Mr Poettering to float his theory that the EU would undergo a change in its nature if Turkey were to join it? If Turkey were to join the EU as it is, it would have to make itself subject to the EU’s
as a whole. If Turkey joins the EU, then, because we all want the Constitution, it would have to make it the basis of its internal policies as soon as it has been ratified. The European Charter of Fundamental Rights will then become constitutional law and binding in a Member State, namely Turkey. It will then be demonstrated that the values defined in that Charter, which are the fundamental values of our Union, can be accepted by a country of whose population 99% or 98% are Muslims.
If we succeed in integrating Turkey into the European Union, then it will effectively demolish the Islamic fundamentalists’ theory that Western – that is, our – values and Islam are mutually exclusive, for it would then provide the proof that the fundamental values for which we contend are fundamental values for all people, whether they be Jews, Muslims, Christians or unbelievers. It is this advance, Mr Poettering, pure and simple, that compels us to commence these negotiations.
There is a second point that we should not underestimate, that being the reforms that Turkey has pushed through in recent years, which were set in motion by Erdoğan, and which are – let me say so plainly – markedly more progressive than all the trifling reforms tackled by previous governments, whether conservative or social democrat. Nine years ago – it was 15 December 1995 – I was one of the three rapporteurs on customs union with Turkey, at a time when Mrs Çiller was that country’s prime minister, about which I will say no more at this point. At that time, she said to us, ‘For heaven’s sake, let us have this customs union, or you will be driving us into the arms of the Islamists.’ Nine months later, she formed a coalition with – as we know – Mr Erbakan. That is in the past; the credibility gap has been forgotten.
Erdoğan has indeed set in motion more reforms than his predecessors in government. The only thing is that they are not enough, but all those people we have been talking to in Turkey, as Mr Eurlings can confirm – all those campaigners for human rights, for women’s rights, all the democratic organisations, all the pro-democracy associations, both the employers’ organisations and the trade unions – all have been telling us that the prospect of accession to the European Union has changed their country, that the prospect of accession to this Union will make their country a normal parliamentary democracy. All this will not be accomplished as soon as tomorrow morning. If it happens, accession will come at some point at the end of the next decade, but the opportunity, the prospect, of seeing this great country become a normal Western democracy is a peace dividend that we must not cast aside.
Let me ask you, Mr Poettering, what will happen if you reject the Turks? What will happen if the reform process is cut short? Is this a risk you can take? That is the question I put to you. Tell us what would happen in a privileged partnership if the reform process were to be halted in its tracks? That is what we need to hear from you, but you have nothing to say on the subject!
This is what we have to say, and it is our third argument: if we succeed in making Turkey democratic and stable, if Western values succeed in putting down roots in its society, if we give the Turks the chance to become what they want to be, in other words, people in Europe, accepting European values for themselves, then we will be creating a European Union that will be making a reality of its peace process, its potential for peace and for the stabilisation of democracy in a region that more than ever needs democracy, human rights, social security and peace. It is these very things that we in the European Union should be exporting to Turkey – if all goes well! That it will is not a given. Nobody can say at the outset of this process whether it will really be successful, but it would be negligent not to try, and so, Mr Eurlings, we, as a group, will be voting in favour of your report."@en1
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