E.U. FOREIGN ministers agreed in principle yesterday on freezing eight of Turkey’s negotiating chapters and to monitor Ankara annually until 2009.
The decision on a partial freeze was reached after a day of haggling between EU foreign ministers in Brussels in their attempt to avoid derailing Ankara’s accession course.
Chapters to be frozen cover trade, financial services and transport.
“We have an agreement. A crisis summit has been averted,” Austrian Foreign Minister Ursula Plassnik told reporters.
However, Plassnik said differences still remained over a reference to the UN peace process on Cyprus and direct trade with the north of the island.
“It’s important to send this double signal that on the one hand there should be no train crash… but that there should be a slowdown,” Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos told reporters after the meeting.
The decision followed a day of wrangling and diplomatic manoeuvring between the foreign ministers over the extent of the partial freeze, and over Nicosia and Athens demand for a set reassessment for Turkey.
Turkey has failed to open its ports and airports to Greek Cypriot traffic under the EU customs union protocol. An offer made at the end of last week to open one port and airport was conditional opening up the same for the north.
Ankara’s offer was rejected as not going far enough to fulfil its obligations and the EU decided to press ahead with a discussions to freeze eight of its 35 negotiating chapters that impinged on the protocol and its effects on the Cyprus dilemma.
By late afternoon yesterday, ministers said they were close to a deal on how many negotiating chapters to freeze but the issue of the new reassessment was proving to be a difficult hurdle.
Austria backed the Greek and Greek Cypriot calls for a fresh assessment in 2008 while Dutch Foreign Minister Bernard Bot said he wanted 10 negotiating chapters suspended rather than the eight proposed, with a review date to check Turkey’s compliance.
But diplomats told Reuters in Brussels the proposal found little support among the majority of the 25 member states.
Early in the day Britain, Italy, Sweden and other countries which back Turkey said the proposals were too harsh.
British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett said: “It is enormously in the strategic interests of the EU and well as in the interests of Turkey for negotiations on reform in Turkey and for negotiations towards Turkey’s membership to continue.”
German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier warned that it would not be good to destroy in a few days what had taken many years to develop.
“This is not, as people in some member states demand, a discussion about breaking off the accession process,” he said.
EU Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn also said early on that he was not in favour of a time frame for Turkey to open its ports and airports to Cyprus. Rehn also raised the issue of Turkey’s long-standing demand for direct trade between the EU and the north of the island.
The Foreign Ministers of Belgium, Italy, Sweden and Latvia also dismissed the time frame for Ankara and suggested no more than three chapters be frozen.
According to the Cyprus News Agency (CNA) Foreign Minister George Lillikas when he addressed the Council meeting said the issue of a timeframe for Turkey was very important.
Diplomats were also telling reporters in Brussels that Lillikas had asked for more than eight chapters to be frozen.
Greek Foreign Minister Dora Bakoyianni backed Cyprus and stressed the need for the EU25 to agree on a clear message to Ankara.
Bakoyianni said that while no one wanted to see the door closed to Turkey, Ankara was obliged to fulfil its obligations to member state Cyprus. In this context, she said a time frame for reassessment was only logical.
”Today in this room, we do not judge a member state, but a candidate state and the discussion should adapt to this reality,” Bakoyianni reportedly told the Council.
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