“We have four chapters in mind, and we hope we can open them during our presidency,” Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos told reporters in Madrid. Turkey, which formally began accession negotiations with the EU in 2005, has so far opened talks on only 12 chapters. Progress has slowed down particularly in the past year, when Ankara and Brussels launched talks only on two chapters -- one during the term presidency of the Czech Republic and one during the Swedish presidency.
The EU suspended accession talks on eight out of 35 chapters in 2006, due to Turkey’s refusal to open its ports and airports to traffic from Greek Cyprus. France, which opposes Turkish accession to the EU, is unilaterally blocking talks on five chapters which it says are directly related to accession. Greek Cyprus, for its part, announced last month that it would veto the opening of talks on five other chapters due to the continued failure of Turkey to open its ports and airports to its ships and planes.
Turkey says it will not open its ports and airports unless the EU keeps its 2004 promise to allow trade with the Turkish Cypriots. Moratinos said he was optimistic that positive results could soon be achieved to solve the decades-old Cyprus problem and added that his country was “very, very interested in ending this conflict.”
Turkish Cypriot leader Mehmet Ali Talat and Greek Cypriot leader Dimitris Christofias have been holding talks to reunite the island since September 2008. They will begin intensified talks this month to speed up the process ahead of presidential elections in Turkish Cyprus in April.
A staunch supporter of Turkey’s membership bid, Spain, which also co-sponsors the UN Alliance of Civilizations together with Ankara, took over the rotating presidency from Sweden. It will hold the position for the next six months.
The Spanish presidency is the first under the 27-nation bloc’s new structure created by the Lisbon Treaty, which produced the post of full-time president, Belgium’s Herman Van Rompuy, and named a new foreign policy chief, Britain’s Catherine Ashton. The treaty, however, retains the system of rotating presidencies for handling the bloc’s day-to-day affairs. Thus, Spain will continue to chair important EU ministerial meetings on the economy, the environment and energy during its presidency and will host several summits, including one between the bloc and the United States in May which President Barack Obama is expected to attend.
