Borderline progress
Civitas, 31 March 2010
Turkey and Croatia began official EU accession talks in 2005, and yet their progress has taken very different paths, writes Natalie Hamill. Last Wednesday, EU Enlargement Commissioner, Štefan Füle, praised Croatia’s progress and said it could potentially join the EU during 2010. Just a few days later, the German Chancellor tried (but failed) to scrape together some encouragement for Turkey’s bid to join the EU bloc.
Croatia has enacted reforms and made progress to strengthen the rule of law in the country. It has also cooperated with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), although the fact that the Court has expressed some concern over access to key documents should not be ignored.
To say that Croatia is ready for membership of the EU, however, is overly keen – Štefan Füle warned the “last leap is the hardest”. Much progress still needs to be made in reforming Croatia’s public administration, and the judiciary, as well as on human rights and fighting corruption.
Despite this, it looks as though the EU is encouraging Croatia to make a last push for the finish post of EU membership. The Spanish Presidency has announced that it hopes to finalise as many of Croatia’s negotiating chapters as possible during its 6-month EU Council Presidency, which lasts until June 2010.
For Turkey however, EU membership talks have been very slow, and still only one of the 35 negotiating chapters has been formally closed. The most optimism that German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, could muster at a March 29th meeting was that Turkey’s process is “open-ended”. In reality, her message to PM Recep Tayyip Erdogan was a much-rehearsed signal in the direction of a “privileged partnership” for Turkey, instead of full EU membership. Given that the majority of Germans think the Turkish and German cultures do not compliment each other, it isn’t surprising that Merkel reached this conclusion, but it was considered insulting by many in Turkey who want their membership bid taken seriously.
Apprehension about the potential accession of a majority Muslim population, and France’s preoccupation with the “uneuropeaness” of Turkish culture, have dominated its candidacy process. Turkey certainly hasn’t helped the situation by dragging its feet over negotiations with Cyprus, (thus forcing the EU to suspend 8 of the 35 chapters). However, with Turkish and Cypriot negotiations apparently now going well, the EU may soon be forced to scramble for another excuse if it wants to continue stalling.
The EU enlargement process requires patience, but the EU seems to be negotiating its borders on contradictory terms. Whilst some states’ membership has been pushed through (as happened with Bulgaria and Romania, and potentially Croatia) Turkey’s bid to join the EU is being “tiptoed around”. If the EU doesn’t want to appear hypocritical then it needs to make a decision on where this “open-ended” membership bid is going, possibly before Iceland (the soon-to-be candidate country) is fast-tracked to full EU membership.