Replies to post #3998 on Foreign Correspondence

[CoalTrain]

France blocks Turkey's path

Looks like France is taking Turkey out of the EU picture. Again Paris siding with Moscow and the Slavic speaking Anti Anglo bloc in the Balkans. Expect that again. Will EU still exist in 2007? One reason the next multi year advance of gold stock buying will be intense IMO is that there is a good chance that in Europe the public at large will become concerned that the Euro wont last many more years. The fantasy that has been EU wont fall apart in the next few weeks but I think we have seen the peak and in stock terms we are looking at a topping process. The interesting thing about EU is that since it was never clearly defined when things dont work they just keep on making up more B.S. Expansion of "ties" in the intermediate to long term will probably having increasing military language and less trade related language. JMO

Nicholas Watt in Luxembourg
Tuesday June 14, 2005
The Guardian

Turkey was being set up as the main casualty of French and Dutch rejection of the EU constitution last night when France seemed to put the brakes on Ankara's 40-year dream of joining the union.
As European leaders prepared to kick the constitution into the long grass at their summit this week, the French foreign minister said it would be difficult to admit Turkey if the measure falls.

Philippe Douste-Blazy told the French daily Le Figaro: "Without the treaty, it seems to me difficult to add more countries when the rules of communal living between us are not clearly defined. It is one of the elements of the absorption capacity of the European Union. After the French referendum, we must reflect on this type of thing."

Britain, which has championed Turkish membership in the face of opposition from political leaders in France and Germany, is determined to press ahead with accession talks on October 3.
Without the constitution, however, it will be difficult for Turkey to join because the EU is limited to 27 members under the "fall back" procedures of the Nice treaty. The EU will reach this number when Romania and Bulgaria join in 2007.

The challenge facing Turkey was highlighted yesterday when EU enlargement was at one point omitted from a draft statement which European leaders will issue at the end of their summit this week.

[CoalTrain]

Expansion off the agenda at EU summit

This is rich! EU admission seems to have to pass Chief Kangaroo court prosecutor Carla Del Ponte´s litmus tests! LOL!
As I mentioned in an earlier post expect Paris to side with Moscow against the Anglo coalition in future Balkan politics.

Staff and agencies
Monday June 13, 2005

European leaders will not discuss expansion of the EU to include Turkey or other countries at this week's EU summit, it was confirmed today.
Senior officials stressed that previous agreements with Turkey and Croatia were still valid and that earlier EU decisions to expand to Romania and Bulgaria remained on track, but it will be the first time in many years that the issue has been dropped from an EU summit declaration. There will only be a single paragraph saying expansion was "necessary".

Analysts said the move was bound to send a negative signal to candidate countries, which have been braced for a backlash following the rejection of the European constitution by France and the Netherlands.
Speaking at the weekend, the Turkish prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, brushed the matter aside.

"None of this has anything to do with us. Turkey is within the [European] boundary. We have not wasted our years for nothing," he said.

The European commission president, Jose Manuel Barroso, has tried to water down fears over expansion, saying it and the constitution "were not connected", but an increasing number of senior European politicians continue to express public doubts about the issue.

Benita Ferrero-Waldner, the EU's external affairs commissioner, told the German newspaper Bild yesterday that enlargement of the EU should be slowed to give people to digest the Dutch and French no votes.

"We need to give our citizens time to breathe. We must fulfil what we have said, but my idea is to reduce the speed of enlargement."

The Austrian finance minister, Karl-Heinz Grasser, said yesterday that Turkish membership "would make excessive demands of Europe".

He said he saw the constitution's rejection in France and the Netherlands as "a warning shot" in opposition to Turkey's membership.

Polls in France and the Netherlands showed that opposition to Turkey's membership was one of the key reasons voters gave for opposing the European constitution.

Diplomats in Luxembourg, where EU foreign ministers are meeting, confirmed that several paragraphs on expansion to include Turkey and other candidates were being dropped in the latest draft of the declaration due to be issued at the end of this week's summit in Brussels.

At a summit in December last year, EU leaders set a conditional October 3 date to open entry talks with Turkey, if it carried through on commitments to implement economic and political reforms, and if it expanded its customs union to include Cyprus.

The Dutch foreign minister, Ben Bot, however, continued to back the EU's official position that entry talks would go ahead as planned.

"They are on track. If the Turks are on track then we are on track," he said.

In a move aimed at reassuring the Turks and the financial markets that the expansion process had not be derailed, EU foreign ministers approved an agreement today that will adapt its customs union with Turkey.

EU foreign ministers endorsed the protocol without discussion, sending it to Turkey for signature. Once it has signed the accord, Ankara will have met all the conditions set by the EU for opening membership talks.

Turkey's top EU negotiator, Ali Babacan, has said the country will sign the document as soon as it receives it.

The foreign ministers also agreed today to review Croatia's progress towards starting membership talks in mid-July in the light of its cooperation with the UN war crimes tribunal on locating a key fugitive suspect.

They noted in a statement that the chief war crimes prosecutor, Carla Del Ponte, had welcomed some progress by Zagreb but said it was still not fully cooperating with the Hague tribunal on the former Yugoslavia.

"There is an agreement that the review will be in July," an official of Luxembourg's EU presidency said, though some states - led by Britain - say Croatia must locate and hand over Ante Gotovina before the EU can start delayed accession talks.