EU risks Islamic backlash if it shuns Turkey – Rehn

Olli Rehn, the European commissioner for enlargement, has warned against creating another "nationalist or Islamist problem" on Europe’s doorstep if Turkey is blocked from joining the EU.

He said that while taking into account the opposition of French President Nicolas Sarkozy to Turkey’s membership of the EU, "the Commission’s view is that we have to keep our word and respect our existing commitments".

"If you look at the current political situation in the Middle East, in Palestine, in Lebanon, not to speak of Iraq, we don’t need another nationalist or Islamist problem in the neighbourhood of Europe," he said, in an interview with European Voice.

"The best way of avoiding this is to keep the EU accession progress alive, continue the negotiations and give Turkey a chance whether it will be able to meet all the democratic and legislative criteria of EU accession."

Member states on Tuesday (26 June) opened accession negotiations with Turkey on two new policy areas, statistics and financial control. But France blocked opening talks on a third negotiating chapter, economic and monetary policy, and Sarkozy has said that he wants to reopen the debate on Turkey’s accession at the December European summit.

Rehn said that Turkey was an "anchor of stability in the most unstable region in the world" and was a "benchmark of democracy for the Muslim world from Morocco to Malaysia".

He indicated that the strictest criteria yet for any EU accession were being applied to Turkey, adding that its accession was "an open-ended process by its very nature and there is no automaticity".

Rehn said that the expected adoption of a new EU treaty this autumn was not a signal to speed up enlargement, "rather it further consolidates our enlargement agenda and the principles we apply rigorously in enlargement".

He backed a decision by EU leaders at the summit last week (21-23 June) to include references to the conditions needed for countries to join the EU in new treaty. "I find that most sensible because this has worked well and provides us with sufficiently rigorous conditionality," he said.

Rehn also agreed with a reference in the new treaty to the common values of the EU in the context of accession.

But he rejected the idea that these references would stop the EU enlargement by being used by some member states as a way of legally blocking further accession. "Our hands are already tied and they need to be tied. We have very clear conditions for EU accession and these conditions are based on common values and we need to apply these conditions rigorously," he said.

The EU had "learned some lessons" from previous enlargement rounds: "We are not giving target dates to the countries at least before the end of the process before we see that they are really about to meet the conditions of EU accession."

No deals would be made with Serbia on EU accession in return for co-operation with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia or over agreement on a solution for Kosovo, he said. "There is no legal basis possible to consider any short-cuts," he said.

Olli Rehn, the European commissioner for enlargement, has warned against creating another "nationalist or Islamist problem" on Europe’s doorstep if Turkey is blocked from joining the EU.