EU-Turkey Accession Negotiations: the State of Play and the Role of the New Turkish Foreign Policy

Turkey’s EU accession negotiations completed their fifth year on 3 October 2010. However, despite annual declarations on the Turkish side that each new year would be ‘the year of the EU’, negotiations seem to be progressing very slowly and the prospects for their timely completion look dim. In fact, with 18 chapters out of the picture due to a variety of obstacles and the blocking of the provisional closure of any chapters until Turkey fulfils its obligations deriving from the Additional Agreement, the situation looks grim indeed.