 Statement from the European Union on the agreement reached by the Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot leaders on a joint declaration and on the resumption of the negotiationsEuropean Commission – MEMO/14/103 11/02/2014
Statement from the European Union on the agreement reached by the Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot leaders on a joint declaration and on the resumption of the negotiations The President of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso, and the President of the European Council, Herman Van Rompuy, issued today the following statement: The European Union welcomes the agreement announced today by the Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot leaders on a Joint Declaration, which lays a solid foundation for resumption of negotiations for a fair and viable comprehensive settlement of the long-standing Cyprus problem. This Joint Declaration should help them to swiftly address matters of substance and to achieve rapid results in the negotiations. President Barroso and President Van Rompuy congratulate and salute the courage the two leaders have shown in agreeing it. At the time of accession of Cyprus, the European Union declared its readiness to accommodate the terms of a settlement in line with the principles on which the Union is founded. As previously announced, the European Commission is keen to play its part in supporting the negotiations, conducted under UN auspices and to offer all the support the parties and the UN find most useful. As the negotiations resume, President Barroso’s personal representative will contribute actively to the search for constructive solutions in compliance with the EU acquis to overcome outstanding problems. In parallel, the European Commission will also step up its efforts to help the Turkish Cypriot Community prepare for implementation of the acquis. The European Union also supports the efforts to reach an agreement between the two parties on a package of Confidence-Building Measures which can help to create momentum towards a settlement to the benefit of Cypriot people. The European Union stands ready to look creatively at how to contribute to this objective in the prospects of a final settlement. |
Tag: The European Union
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Press Statement: The European Union on the agreement reached by the Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot leaders
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Turkey’s Wrong Turn
By THE EDITORIAL BOARD
Turkey’s prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, was in Brussels last week seeking to repair relations with Europe, but the first place to look for a solution is within himself. Once hailed as the leader of a model Muslim democracy, he has created a political disaster at home, transforming Turkey into an authoritarian state that poses dangers not just for itself but for its allies in NATO, including the United States.
The latest turmoil has its roots in a political war between Mr. Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party and his former close allies who follow Fethullah Gulen, a moderate Islamic scholar who lives in Pennsylvania. The tensions erupted into the open last month with a corruption probe that led to the resignation of four government ministers and threatened to ensnare Mr. Erdogan’s family. The prime minister called the probe a “coup attempt” and blamed a “secret organization” within the judiciary and police directed by the Gulen movement and serving “foreign powers” like the United States and Israel. The government has since purged hundreds of police officials and prosecutors and sought to assert control over the judiciary. It also drafted legislation expanding the government’s power to appoint judges and prosecutors, further breaching judicial independence, and has prevented journalists from reporting freely. All the while, Mr. Erdogan has spewed endless conspiracy theories and incendiary rhetoric, even hinting at American treachery and suggesting that the American ambassador might be expelled.
The probe and Mr. Erdogan’s reaction may well be politically motivated. There are important local elections in March. But Mr. Erdogan should be insisting that the probe be fair and transparent, not trying to derail it. His ruthless ways and his attempt to crush dissent are not new, as the crackdown against demonstrators during protests last June showed. Such actions trample on democratic reforms demanded by the European Union as part of Turkey’s bid for union membership, which may be more in peril than ever, and are increasingly at odds with the ground rules for NATO members.
Germany’s foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, was right when he said in Brussels that the Europeans must demand that Turkey return to the rule of law. The Obama administration also needs to send a strong message about the damaging course Mr. Erdogan is pursuing. Whether Turkey nurtures its hard-won democracy, which has contributed to its impressive economic growth, or turns authoritarian is as critical to regional stability and to its NATO allies as it is to Turks.
A VERSION OF THIS EDITORIAL APPEARS IN PRINT ON JANUARY 28, 2014, IN THE INTERNATIONAL NEW YORK TIMES.
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The road to Tehran runs through Ankara
Posted By Geneive Abdo
Iran’s Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki in recent days met with dignitaries at the United Nations to generate international support for Iran to engage in talks with the United States and other permanent members of the UN Security Council over Iran’s nuclear program. But when Mottaki and other Iranian officials in Tehran have talked recently about restarting talks, they are not referring to the nuclear negotiations the Europeans and the United States are hoping for; rather, they are trying to gain traction on negotiations about the Tehran Declaration, the agreement brokered between Iran, Brazil and Turkey in May, which is limited to a swap deal over a portion of Iran’s enriched uranium. This is the deal the United States, Britain, and France dismissed in May as a sideshow and a manipulative tactic by Iran to get out of tough sanctions, shortly before crippling sanctions were passed in the United Nations, the European Union, and the U.S. Congress. At the time, this action prompted a hostile reaction from Iran.
Now that Mottaki is placing the deal squarely on the table again, the Obama administration should seize the moment. Rather than purse talks over Iran’s broader nuclear program and risk failure — during a period when there appears to be little time to waste before either a military attack is launched against Iran or Iran develops the technology to produce a nuclear weapon — a wiser move would be to talk with Iran first over the Tehran Declaration as a way of building trust.
This is certainly the view of the Turks. A delegation of Turkish parliamentarians was in Washington last week for meetings with the Obama administration over Ankara’s relations with Iran, Israel and other issues. The delegation likely advised the United States to take Iran up on its offer to begin talks immediately over the Tehran Declaration. At least one other Turkish delegation visited Washington this past summer, delivering this same message. But their efforts produced little more than hostility from members of Congress and less than enthusiastic responses from officials in the administration.
In interviews I had in Turkey during a recent trip there, Turkish diplomats who spent months shuttling between Ankara and Tehran last spring to broker the Tehran Declaration told me that the United States should accept Iran’s offer to make the Tehran Declaration the framework of any negotiations with the five-plus-one because there is no support in Tehran now to negotiate over Iran’s broader nuclear program. This might be what the United States wants, but there is no backing for it among a cross-section of Iran’s political elites. “The inner circle around [Supreme Leader Ali] Khamenei views this Tehran agreement as a first step to establish good faith with Western governments,” said one Turkish official with first-hand knowledge of the talks with Iran.
Iran’s new campaign to revive the Tehran Declaration extends from New York to Tehran. On Sept. 28, Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast reiterated Iran’s position: “We have repeatedly said that we are ready for talks with Vienna Group based on [the] Tehran Declaration and we are continuing consultation to specify details of the negotiation as well as its place and time.”
Turkish officials have stated repeatedly — both last week during their Washington visit and in the summer — that Turkey wants to facilitate the negotiations with Iran and the five-plus-one. Indeed, as the arbiter Turkey would likely ensure success. By now, Turkish negotiators understand the internal politics inside the Iranian regime far better than their European or American counterparts do. The many months Turkish foreign ministry officials shuttled between Tehran and Ankara were instructive: “It was a good lesson in how to build a consensus with different political actors,” one Turkish foreign ministry official told me who participated in the delegation.
The Turks believe that negotiations first over the fuel swap deal — even though it falls far short of the demands of the five-plus-one — will lead the inner circle around Khamenei and the supreme leader himself to compromise over other issues of concern to the West, such as Iran enriching uranium at 20 percent, which the Obama administration adamantly opposes because it could allow Iran to eventually produce a nuclear weapon.
The United States should listen to the Turks, simply because there are no other options to begin a dialogue with Iran. At this point, we do not need any more negotiations with Iran to understand that Western states cannot effectively talk to the Iranians alone. Talks between the five-plus-one with Iran, with Turkey as the arbiter, are a positive path out of the deadlock.
Geneive Abdo is the Director of the Iran program at The Century Foundation and creator of .
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October 6, 2010
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“No Europe without Turkey”–Lech Walesa
GDANSK) – Turkey must be admitted to the European Union,Poland’s former president and Nobel laureate Lech Walesa insistedon Wednesday.
“There’s no Europe without Turkey,” Walesa told AFP in an interview.“Turkey should gradually reach Europe’s level of development and entertomorrow,” he added.Turkey kicked off membership talks with the EU in 2005.The process has been sluggish, however, in part because of France andGermany’s wariness about letting the Muslim-majority nation of 75 millioninto the 27-nation bloc.Poland, which is due to take over the EU’s rotating presidency in the secondhalf of 2011, backs Turkish entry.
The deeply Catholic Walesa said religious-rooted concerns should not come into play.
“Borders and splits have led to conflict, especially on the religious side,”he said. “Religion has been exploited”.
“Religion will return to its proper place. People will understand that in reality,God is the same for all religions but there are too many defenders of the faith,”he said.Poland joined the EU in 2004, 15 years after its communist regime was brought down bloodlessly by Walesa’s opposition movement Solidarity. -
EU launches digital library at Frankfurt Book Fair
(FRANKFURT) – The European Union used the world’s biggest book fair to launch the EU Bookshop’s digital library, making more than 50 years of documents in about 50 languages available for free on the Internet.
Individuals, companies and isolated libraries from Australia to Zambia can download files dating back to 1952 when six countries created what is now the 27-member EU.
“With the digital library, we have total transparency” of EU legislative and cultural publications, Commissioner for Multilinguism Leonard Orban told AFP on Sunday.
The project also underpins “the commitment of the European Union to preserve and encourage the history of the union in its linguistic diversity,” he added.
The library’s oldest document is a speech by Jean Monnet to inaugurate the High Authority of the Coal and Steel Community, the EU’s precursor.
From four official languages at its start, the union now counts 23, but some publications are also available in Chinese, Russian and around 20 other languages.
Orban voiced hope that the digital library would be “an additional tool for combating prejudices.”
On a practical level he added: “No one can complain now of problems consulting legislative texts and associated documents.”
Roughly 110,000 publications or 12 million pages — the equivalent of four kilometres (2.5 miles) of bookshelves — were scanned from EU archives from February 2008 at a cost of about 2.5 million euros (3.75 million dollars).
The library counts around 140,000 publications today, and 1,500 “born digital” ones are added each year. More pre-digital documents will also be scanned into the system.
Topics covered by EU institutions, agencies and other bodies include education, the environment, health and transport, an EU statement released at the Frankfurt Book Fair said.
Official statistics from 1953 to the present are also available.
The library’s contents will also be a part of Europeana, a project of prominent national European libraries and archives that Claudia Lux, president of the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions called the largest digital library worldwide.
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