By Constantinos Psillides
Foreign minister Ioannis Kasoulides on Tuesday welcomed the conclusions in a report on enlargement approved by the EU General Affairs Council, saying that Cyprus –backed by Greece and Austria – succeeded in keeping eight chapters of the EU-Turkey accession talks frozen.
Following the Council’s meeting, Kasoulides referred reporters to chapter 23 of the report, which read that “Turkey, despite repeated calls, continues refusing to fulfil its obligation of full, non-discriminatory implementation of the Additional Protocol to the Association Agreement towards all Member States, the fulfilment of which could provide a significant boost to the negotiations process.”
The conclusion refers to Turkey’s continued refusal to recognise Cyprus as a state, despite being the country being a member-state of the EU. Recognising all EU states is a key requirement to entering the bloc, according to the provisions of the Association Agreement. This was further illustrated in another part of the conclusions report, which states that Turkey has not made progress towards the necessary normalisation of its relations with Cyprus.
The Council made clear in its report that recognising all member-states is a necessary component of the accession process and invited the EU Commission to closely monitor the situation in Cyprus. “On this basis, the Council will continue to closely follow and review progress made, in accordance with its relevant conclusions. The Council reiterates its call for progress without any further delay,” the report read.
As part of recognising Cyprus as a member-state of the EU, the General Affairs Council also asked Turkey to extend its readmission agreement signed with the EU to include the Republic, adding that “progress in the dialogue on visa liberalisation will be founded on a performance-based approach and conditioned on effective and consistent implementation by Turkey of the requirements in the visa roadmap”.
Kasoulides claimed that some within the Council wanted to unfreeze the chapters to send a message to all democratic people in Turkey. “I told them that as a European I disagreed with that assessment since the country’s prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, will present it as a personal victory through the media he controls, which coincidentally are the only ones left in Turkey”.
The General Affairs Council also noted that it expects Turkey to actively support negotiations “aimed at a fair, comprehensive and viable settlement of the Cyprus problem within the UN framework, in accordance with the relevant UN Security Council resolutions and in line with the principles on which the Union is founded. Turkey’s commitment and contribution in concrete terms to such a comprehensive settlement is crucial. Under the current circumstances, the Council considers it more important than ever to ensure a positive climate so that negotiations for a comprehensive Cyprus settlement can resume.”
President Nicos Anastasiades withdrew from the negotiations in October following the dispatch of the Turkish research vessel Barbaros to conduct seismic surveys in Cyprus’ Exclusive Economic Zone.
