TURKEY IN THE ACCESSION NEGOTIATIONS Nilgn ARISAN ERALP Secretariat General for the EU Affairs 28 Ap

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TURKEY IN THE ACCESSION NEGOTIATIONS
Nilgün ARISAN ERALPSecretariat General for
the EU Affairs 28 April 2006
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Negotiations
Against all odds, accession negotiatons
between EU and Turkey were initiated on 3rd of
October , around 23.00 hrs GMT. Key Questions?
How long they are going to last ? What will be
the final outcome ?
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Negotiations
Negotiations constitute a new reality
there are still years of negotiations and plenty
of pitfalls ahead, but if Turkey ever joins the
European Union, people will look back on this
summit as a decisive moment Chris Morris, BBC
Europe correspondent . now EU has become a
stakeholder in the continuation of the
political, economic and social transformation of
the country Olli REHN, Enlargement Commisioner
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Negotiation Framework

• definitely a vigorous and strict one
• signals a tough time ahead challenges and
  difficulties
• contains grey areas.

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Negotiation Framework

• outcome of the following factors
• Turkeys differences (size, population,
  geographical location etc.)
• Negative experiences of the 5th enlargement
• Enlargement fatigue/ temporary indigestion
  caused by the 5th enlargement/enlargement fear
• Certain level of mistrust towards Turkey.

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Negotiation Framework

• Our attention should focus on
• the shared objective of the negotiations is
  accession
• For the moment we should try to omit the fact
  that
• politics not technicalities will finally decide
  Turkeys fate
• We have to concentrate on another fact
• the pace of the negotiatons is closely related
  to Turkeys performance in fulfilling the
  membership criteria

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Negotiations

• What we expect
• a strict (negotiation framework) but fair
  approach on the basis of merit

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Membership Criteria

• Political Criteria
• Economic Criteria
• Acquis Criteria adopting and efficiently
  implementing the body of EU legislation

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Political Criteria

• Key importance in the negotiation process
• Closely monitored by the European Commission
• Failure in this area might result in the
  suspension of the talks .

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Political Criteria

• European Commission Turkey has sufficiently
  fulfilled the political criteria.
• Ambitious transformation especially since summer
  2002
• abolishing the death penalty
• Kurdish language learning
• broadcasting in Kurdish language
• scrapping state security courts
• revising the penal code
• tightening the civil control over the army.
•  

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Political Criteria

• Still much to do to establish the EU norms in the
  country
• keywords
• implementation
• monitoring (reform monitoring group)
• minimising road accidents
• putting the emphasis on training (law enforcement
  bodies and judiciary).
•  

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Economic Criteria

• Not the subject of negotiations per se.
• The process of fulfilling the economic criteria
  will be closely monitored and the failure of
  doing so might be a benchmark for opening aup
  negotiations in some chapters related with the
  economy
• Free movement of Capital
• Competititon
• Economic and Monetary Policy
• Enterprise and Industrial Policy.

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Economic Criteria
EU demands disinflation and fiscal
sustainability and necessary reforms necessary
to attain these Turkeys main priority To
ensure a sustainable growth environment reducing
inflationary pressures and bringing public sector
deficit and debt ratios to EU averages.
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Economic Criteria Key Instruments
Particular emphasis privatisation and
structural reforms and lowering regional
differences
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Economic Criteria Key Instruments

• Main Structural Reforms
• completing the reform of the financial sector and
  modernising public finances
• modernising public administration
• reforming agricultural sector.

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Economic Criteria Accomplishments

• institutional and legal infrastructure of a free
  market economy has almost been completed
• significant improvement in key macroeconomic
  indicators like growth (2004 9.9, 2005 5.3 ),
  inflation rate (2004 9.3, 2005 7.6 ), ratio
  of budget deficit to national income (2004
  -7.1, 2005 - 6.1 ), ratio of public debt to
  national income (2001 90.5 , 2005 70 ),
  etc.
• economic stability and predictability has
  significantly improved
• there is broad consensus on essentials of
  economic policy
• privatisation process has accelerated

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Economic Criteria Accomplishments

• structural reforms seem to be in the right track
  in general
• major shift in development policy National
  Development Plan
• a new policy Rural Development

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Economic Criteria

• Main Challenges
• Unemployment (10 )
• Agricultural employment (35.2 of workforce in
  agriculture)
• Regional disparities
• Existence of informal sector
• Lack of a coherent education policy geared
  towards the needs of the labour market.

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Economic Criteria What Remains to be Done

• Major concerns of the EU
• sustainability of macroeconomic stability and
  fiscal discipline (are they still fragile?) and
  predictability
• state intervention in the economy three state
  banks still control 30-40 of the banking
  sector
• unfavorable investment climate.

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Adopting the Acquis
1-Free Movement of Goods 2-Free Movement of
Workers 3-Right of Establishment and Freedom to
Provide Services 4-Free Movement of Capital 5-
Public Procurement 6-Company Law 7- Intellectual
Property Law 8-Competition Policy (State Aids) 9-
Financial Services 10- Information Society and
Media

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Adopting the Acquis

• 11-Agriculture and Rural Development
• 12- Food Safety, Veterinary and Phytosanitary
  Policy
• 13 -Fisheries
• 14-Transport Policy
• 15-Energy
• 16-Taxation
• 17- Economic and Monetary Policy
• 18- Statistics
• 19- Social Policy and Employment

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Adopting the Acquis
20- Enterprise and Industrial Policy 21-
Trans-European Networks 22-Regional Policy and
Coordination of Structural Instruments 23-
Judiciary and Fundamental Rights 24- Justice,
Freedom and Security 25- Science and Research
26- Education and Culture 27- Environment

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Adopting the Acquis
28- Consumer Protection 29- Customs Union 30-
External Relations 31-Common Foreign and Security
Policy 32- Financial Control 33- Financial and
Budgetary Affairs

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Values and Principles of the EU Acquis
Governability

• The governability principles are embedded in the
  EU acquis (body of EU legislation)
• transparency
• accountability
• participation with a special emphasis on social
  dialogue
• change in the role of state producer state
  regulatory state/ monitoring state/coordinator
  state
• Olli REHN Good governance is the key to make
  full use of Turkeys potential

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TURKEYS ACCESSION PROCESS

• Acquis the principles and values
• Transparency and accountability
• the Law on the right to have access to
  information
• Public Financial Management Law
• new simplified budgetary system
• strengthening of the Public Procurement
  Authority .
• Participation
• change in the working procedure of the Economic
  and Social Council
• strengthening of social dialogue especially in
  the labour market
• preparing the National Development Plan with a
  participatory method

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TURKEYS ACCESSION PROCESS

• Acquis the principles and values
• Public sector reform programme aims to enhance
  the participation principle in the state-citizen
  relations by increasing the number of
  consultation mechanisms in the policy-making.
• introduces regulatory impact analysis method to
  the drafting stage of the legislative process in
  Turkey
• Change in the role of state
• Network industries and natural monopolies have
  been introduced to market competition. State
  regulator in these sectors.

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THE UNDERLYING PRINCIPLE OF TURKEYS CURRENT
NEGOTIATION PROCESS
at the core of integration of any form, lies
the need to establish credible commitments
(Phedon Nicolaides) Turkey currently concentrates
all its efforts to make its commitments
credible. New Negotiation Structure Ministries
main actors Coordination Prime Ministry,
Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Secretariat General
for the EU Affairs, State Planning Organisation,
Turkeys Permanent Representation in the EU.
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THE SCREENING PROCESS OF TURKEY

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THE SCREENING PROCESS OF TURKEY

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CONCLUSION

• A significant synergy has already been created
  in various important fields
• A real sense of direction has been built and a
  significant momentum has been attained.
• This momentum will be strengthened with the
  negotiation process.

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CONCLUSION
However Vision and political courage is
required on both sides for the period ahead of us
to be succesful and these should be translated
into policies as vision without
implemantation is hallucination (Bertrand
Russel)