site.btaTurkiye and EU Should Develop Areas of Mutual Interest Independent of EU Accession Process

The EU and Turkiye should develop bilateral relations in areas of mutual interest, independently from the EU accession process, the European Parliament rapporteur on Turkiye, Nacho Sanchez Amor, urged on Thursday. He presented the conclusions of his report on Turkiye's progress towards the EU to MEPs on the EP's foreign affairs committee.

Sanchez called for contacts between the EU and Ankara to resume at the highest level. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has not mentioned Turkiye for at least a year when talking about the EU enlargement process and this is wrong, he said. This is rude, Turkiye is formally a candidate for EU accession, the rapporteur noted.

 “The accession negotiation process is not a bargaining process but a matter of fulfilling conditions. If there is no progress on the negotiating benchmarks, let us turn to the rest of the bilateral relationship. The report calls for a clear separation of the accession process from other areas of bilateral relations,” he said.

In his words, the negotiation process is linked to democracy and there has been no progress in recent years following the collapse of democratic standards in Turkiye. He said the situation with democracy in the country was deteriorating further.