| Turkish Accession
|
|
Mr. MacShane: That is a matter for the negotiating team, and it is not for me to set it out here. To my knowledge—again, if I am wrong, I shall happily write to Committee members—no specific benchmark was set in the past. Let us not forget that Turkey is growing 10 per cent. per annum at the moment. One does not have to be an actuary or a brilliant accountant to work out in compound interest terms how quickly the Turkish economy will grow. We need structural reforms to be implemented in Turkey, and we need less state and more free market operation there. We need more inward investment and less emphasis on rather low added value agricultural production, with a movement into the higher added value bits of the economy, such as tourism. At the moment, 1 per cent. of the world's wealth comes from working the land and 12 per cent. comes from tourism. When I visited the Aegean coastline of Turkey, I saw what I would have seen 30 years ago in Andalusia and other coastal regions of Spain—the most extraordinary potential for tourism growth. Adding the cultural wonders, mountains and other spectacular and barely tapped beauties of Turkey means that when the country is fully open to the whole of Europe, it will be one of the strongest economic performers. As I said, those are hopes, and I do not think that it is right to stipulate now such things as a hurdle to be passed in two, five, six or 10 years' time, before consideration for EU membership. All those points will be thoroughly taken into consideration by the negotiating team. Mr. Brady: Given that the process has been going on for 40 years and that we are now talking about negotiations that might continue for 10 or perhaps 15 years, is it not absurd that we are also discussing delaying the commencement of the negotiations until the second half of next year? Why should they not start immediately? Mr. MacShane: I agree completely with the hon. Gentleman. Again, he puts the Government's view much more crisply than I do. Mr. Walter: On that theme, it has just been mentioned that the Turkish application has been lying on the table for a considerable number of years, to much resentment in Turkey. We hope that we shall take a decision on 17 December to open negotiations with Turkey and Croatia, alongside the negotiations with Bulgaria and Romania. Will the Minister give the Column Number: 14 Committee an assurance that we shall look to do what we did earlier in the year, and arrange for all those nations to enter on the same date?Mr. MacShane: There is no question of that. Bulgaria and Romania are much further down the track for negotiation. We have already started negotiations with them, and we are talking more about closing them than opening them. On Croatia, the United Kingdom Government are a strong supporter of its EU aspirations, but we are concerned, as are several member states, about the need for full compliance with the demands of the international criminal tribunal in The Hague on serious war crimes accusations. One of those demands concerns a gentleman called Gotovina, who is up there with Messrs. Karadzic and Mladic, accused of very serious war crimes, and so far the Croats have failed to deliver him to The Hague. I urge colleagues not to bundle together countries of different sizes and different levels of economic development. It is only in the past few years, particularly under the current Turkish Government, when the necessary reforms have been set in hand and passed by Parliament—laws have been changed and a civilian has been put in charge of the national security council—that it has been possible to say, as the Commission did on 6 October, that Turkey should now be considered a potential candidate for EU membership. General de Gaulle may have talked about Turkey in 1963. In my adult lifetime, there have been two military coups in Turkey and democratic Governments have been knocked to one side to be replaced by soldiers. That is obviously not acceptable in the modern European Union. Let us all stick hard to what will be an incredibly challenging 10 years that lie ahead of us. Frankly, 10 years in European history is not quite a nanosecond, but it is quite a short period. Ten years in Turkish history are not even a sip of coffee in Istanbul. Over those 10 years, we are going to work closely with our Turkish friends to see a fully Europeanised Turkey join Britain as a leading player in the EU of the 21st century. Mr. Hopkins: Let me return to page 8 and the reference at the end of annex 1 to the desire to restructure state enterprises. Presumably, that is a code for privatisation. Looking further in the document, we see that it says that there has been insufficient determination by Turkish Governments to pursue privatisation. I did not appreciate that privatisation was a necessary condition for entry into the European Union; such a condition has certainly not applied to existing members. Would my hon. Friend care to comment on that point? Mr. MacShane: To put it simply, what all European Union members—existing members and those seeking to join—must do is demonstrate that they have a functioning market economy. I could take my hon. Friend through the language of the new constitutional treaty, but I know that he is intimate with it. It also refers to a competitive social market economy. The demands to Turkey are simply to show us that it has a Column Number: 15 functioning market economy. He is right to say that there are various forms of ownership under God's sun that can provide a functioning market economy, but where there are systems of state ownership that impede a functioning market economy and that involve political direction of the economy, problems might arise. I do not want to stray into controversial territory; I am saying that where, for example, the military has a huge economic interest—I am trying to put my words as sensitively as I can—on the whole, the army should not be in business and must get on with the business of being an army of high-quality professional soldiers. If that means privatisation, so be it.Again, I ask my hon. Friend to have patience and confidence in the negotiating team. I am happy to come back to report to the House on the progress of those talks from time to time. What we want is to see the best economy for Turkey, which fits and meshes with other European norms. I am sure that he would not want us to revert to total state nationalisation of every bit of economic activity that moves, although perhaps I am wrong. Mr. Johnson: When the Minister thinks of life in Turkey and in the European Union and sets them side by side in his mind, what does he think is the biggest single advantage that the Turks stand to gain from membership of the EU? Mr. MacShane: Rule of law, above all else. Also, being part of a market that would then comprise more than 500 million people—every Turkish businessman could seek to sell his products and services across that giant market—a sense of speaking with us in Britain and our allies elsewhere in Europe on some of the great issues of the day; the ability to travel and trade freely; and I hope the sense that Turkey will have a 21st century based on peace, prosperity and partnership. The Turkish 20th, 19th, 18th and previous centuries perhaps did not have enough of those values, and neither did many European countries. The old Europe was one of conflict, tyranny and a lack of human rights, whereas the new Europe that most of us want to build is based on rule of law and respect for the values laid down in the charter of fundamental rights. I was struck by the phrase of Leyla Zana, the Kurdish writer who said when she was in prison that she would rather be in prison in a Turkey that was heading for the European Union than free in a Turkey that rejected it. I think that it is fair to say that the constant pressure that this Government and others in Europe exerted on the Turkish authorities in respect of her case, and the fact that Turkey wanted a positive report from the Commission and wants a positive vote on 17 December, contributed greatly to her release. Europe should continue to strive for the release of anyone imprisoned basically for what they have said and written. If we can achieve that and nothing else, the existence of the European Union certainly merits my support. I hope that one day it will merit the support of the Conservatives. Column Number: 16 Mr. Walter: The Minister might wish to ponder the lack of linkage between the entry of Cyprus to the European Union, reunification of Cyprus and the Turkish application, which was lying on the table. We have been led to a situation in which Cyprus has joined the EU without unification. Does he see any linkage between the Turkish negotiations for membership and the reunification of the island? Mr. MacShane: On the first point, I was not ministerially responsible, but as I understand the history from talking to people and reading newspapers, it was clear that if Turkey was to go down the road of having all 15 member states endorse the process, it would not have been possible to exclude the sovereign independent Republic of Cyprus, which met all the EU criteria. We are where we are. Undoubtedly the negotiation process will help to focus minds on, for example, the fact that Turkey does not have diplomatic relations with an EU member state, namely Cyprus. In our view and I think that of the rest of Europe, there is no question of that issue being brought in as a condition at the last moment before 17 December. However, my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary and I have said that the normalisation of relations between Turkey and Cyprus would obviously be helpful. There are many bits and pieces to that process, but at the end of the day the problem involving Cyprus is a United Nations problem, not a European Union problem. The Annan plan is on the table. All 9,000 pages of it were sincerely put together by the best international servants that the UN Secretary-General could find, and other member states were involved. We need to look to the Annan plan or some variant of it. I think that the problems involving the island should now be solved by direct talks between north and south. I hope that as Turkey becomes more European, the differences between Ankara and Nicosia can be settled, but the ultimate solution will have to be somewhere in the area defined by the Annan plan and the work that has gone into the different versions of it in the past few years.
|
| |
| ©Parliamentary copyright 2004 | Prepared 7 December 2004 |
