Press Release: Germany: Schröder and Chirac favor EU membership for Turkey

At an informal meeting Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and French President Jacques Chirac renewed their support for beginning negotiations with Turkey on EU membership. A decision to this effect is to be taken by the EU heads of state and government at a European Council meeting in December. Chancellor Gerhard Schröder met with President Jacques Chirac for informal talks in Strasbourg on October 1. Foreign Ministers Joschka Fischer and Michel Barnier were also at the meeting. A joint foreign and European policy was among the items on the agenda. This was the twentieth in a series of informal meetings between the German and French heads of government and their foreign ministers. These meetings are known as the Blaesheim Process, initiated in 2001 in the town of Blaesheim in the Alsace-Lorraine region of eastern France. They are held at regular intervals, do not have a fixed agenda, and are an expression of the close cooperative relationship that exists between Germany and France