Wednesday Talk

Joost Lagendijk (the co-chair of the Turkey-EU Joint Parliamentary Committee)

TURKEY-EU RELATIONS

Mr. Joost Lagendijk, the co-chair of the EU-Turkey Joint Parliamentary Committee, gave a seminar on “Turkey-EU Relations” in MURCIR’s Wednesday Talks series on 16th April 2007. He talked on the recent developments about Turkey’s accession process and answered the participants’ questions on different dimensions of Turkey’s accession process, the EU enlargement and the Union’s approaches towards some controversial issues.

Mr. Lagendijk began his speech by mentioning the turning points of the Turkey-EU relations in recent years. He noted that although there are some political bottlenecks, the technical chapters are moving ahead. Comparing Turkey’s situation with the former candidate countries, Mr. Lagendijk told that Turkey’s accession process could be compared with Spain’s candidateship regarding the high public interest it attracted in Europe. Mr. Joost Lagendijk stressed that different from the cases of other countries which have become EU members during various enlargement waves, the debate about Turkey’s EU membership has been more popular and attracted more public interest compared to those.