Leaders back talks with Croatia, Turkey

EU supports continuation of membership talks with Croatia and Turkey, but gives no date for start of talks with Macedonia.

The leaders of the European Union’s 27 member states today endorsed proposals to continue membership talks with Croatia and Turkey and agreed that Macedonia should not as yet be given a date for the start of accession talks.

Two of the issues – talks with Turkey Macedonia – had proved contentious in a meeting of EU foreign ministers on Monday (7 December), but prompted no discussion at the summit of EU leaders held in Brussels yesterday and today.

This was the first EU summit where EU leaders met without their foreign ministers, a model foreseen under the Lisbon treaty.

Turkey

On Monday, the issue of Turkey’s membership negotiations and its refusal to open its sea- and airports to traffic from the divided island of Cyprus provoked a heated debate between the foreign ministers, hijacking a planned dinner exchange with Catherine Ashton, the EU’s new foreign policy chief, on “Europe as a global actor”.

Markos Kyprianou, the foreign minister of Cyprus, announced on Tuesday that his government would block the start of negotiations on five chapters that it sees as linked to Turkey’s attitude toward Cyprus.

The five are in addition to eight chapters that are already blocked, and to the energy chapter which Cyprus said earlier it would block. This means that almost half of Turkey’s negotiation chapters are currently frozen.

But the foreign ministers rejected Cypriot ideas of freezing the entire negotiation process, instead chiding Turkey for its failure to implement its obligations relating to Cyprus. The foreign ministers felt that the settlement talks between Cyprus’s Greek and Turkish community were at a very sensitive stage and might be threatened by any stronger action. Turkey is to open another chapter, on the environment, on 21 December.

Macedonia

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EU leaders on enlargement

On Croatia, the European Council’s conclusions welcome the establishment on Monday of a working group tasked with drafting the country’s accession treaty, which is to begin its work in the coming weeks. Croatia is expected to enter the Union in January 2012, although the Union does not want to commit itself to a date yet.

On Iceland, which submitted a membership application in July, the leaders noted that the country was already “closely integrated” with the EU in several areas. Membership talks are expected to start next year.

On Albania, the conclusions say that much work remains to be done. The Commission is currently assessing the country’s readiness for membership negotiations. It is expected that the Commission’s findings will be available at the end of next year or in early 2011.

On Montenegro, the conclusions welcomed progress in many areas. The Commission is expected in the first half of next year to recommend the opening of accession talks.

On Bosnia and Herzegovina, the member states remain “concerned” about the political situation and express their support for the work of Valentin Inzko, the EU’s special envoy. EU foreign ministers this week failed to discuss the future of the EU’s peacekeeping mission, which most troop contributors want to transform into a far smaller advisory mission. They agreed to revisit the issue in January.

On Serbia, the conclusions lift a block on an interim trade agreement after the Netherlands agreed with the other EU member states that Serbia was co-operating sufficiently with a United Nations war-crimes court. The foreign ministers agreed earlier this week to discuss the ratification of Serbia’s main pre-accession agreement in six months’ time.

On Kosovo, the conclusions stress that the overall situation remains “fragile” but that measures to support Kosovo’s “progress towards the EU” should be implemented without prejudice to the fact that five member states have not recognised Kosovo as an independent country.

The leaders are “very pleased” with the scrapping of visa requirements for citizens of Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia, which will take effect on 19 December.

Another contentious issue for the foreign ministers was Macedonia, which has been a candidate for membership since 2005. Greece, which has a province of the same name, says that it will not allow accession talks to begin unless Macedonia modifies its name, for example with a geographical attribution along the lines of “Republic of Northern Macedonia”.

Macedonia has been reluctant to accept such a solution, seeing it as an attack on its national identity.

The European Commission found in October that Macedonia had met all the preconditions for membership talks to begin, but the foreign ministers deferred a decision until the first half of next year to allow talks on the name issue mediated by the United Nations to progress.

Enlargement report

The proposals on membership talks formed part of a document on the state of the union’s enlargement process prepared by the EU’s foreign ministers on Monday.

The EU leaders’ approval of the proposals are conclusions are, in essence, member states’ political assessment of the progress reports presented by the European Commission in October, an annual stocktaking exercise.

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