It certainly isn’t a net receiver yet, but it does have a significant number of immigrants, legal and illegal, from a swathe of what was once the former USSR from Moldova in the west to Kyrgyzstan in the East.

Yes, but the French voters would probably have the same opinion as those in other countries not allowed to vote.

You may wish to recall that the French held a referendum on whether the United Kingdom should be admitted to the EU.

Since France especially is famous for ‘yes, but’ when it really means no, it must be disturbing to Turkey that it can’t even get that.

As Doug points out, the problem is the veto. I think that referendums on the EU-level, that is referendums with all the population in EU being able to vote in the same referendum, could be a very good thing. It would be a major factor in actually creating a european political discussion. Philip Hunt of cabamalat.org suggested how this could be used for deciding the constitution as early as
last december.

No, I think you are probably right, but it is a kind of dangerous auction.

“Indeed, somewhere between 10 and 20 years as the timeframe for potential Turkish accession seems to be the consensus view.”

Personally I’d be looking for five to ten years. As I’ve said before I think if the EU doesn’t change course, then push comes to shove on all those deficits somewhere in the 2008 - 2012 time horizon, so anything after 2015 looks so far out in the future as to be a joke, quite frankly.

Ironically looking at recent EU documentation, IMF and World bank reports and Greenspan’s speeches it seems to me that things really are starting to move on the recognition that economically motivated migration is going to be needed (posts on this to come). We would be in a really rather silly situation if we were opening up the gates to migrants whilst restricting migration from accession countries. Still looking quickly at Turkey’s demographics I doubt we’ll be seeing much out migration from Turkey 10 years hence (this also has a time window). Possibly Turkey itself could become a net receiver of migrants.

(Don’t laugh, remember Spain, which 20 years ago had migrants all over the place, was last year the EU’s biggest single importer of migrants, and the principle of acceleration states that ‘things get quicker quicker’).

The funny thing is that the argument about numbers of people seems to cut in strange directions. OTOH Turkey is too big to digest comfortably, OTOH it is of negligable economic importance, or so it is often argued. It is hard to win this kind of debate.

The thing is that we have difficulty forward projecting growth rates (in our heads I mean). Turkey currently has a growth rate of around 7% if this is roughly sustained (give or take the odd business cycle) over 10 years as it closes on the EU, then we are no longer talking about a ‘poor and needy’ Turkey, but an economic power which can breathe some lifeblood into our ageing arteries.

One, a referendum isn’t required for a veto. France vetoed British membership in 1963 without one.

Two, Sarkozy is getting ready to run for President. So, vaguely populist national greatness stuff is exactly what you’d expect. And the fact that he made the remarks after Raffarin is suggestive; Sarkozy is too clever to allow a rival to grab such a potentially powerful issue.

So, I’m not inclined to take this too seriously.

(Although if Turkish membership gets conflated in the public mind with approval of the EU Constitution… ah, now that could get interesting.)

Doug M.

As for the population thing, I agree, but I can see the other side’s point. If Turkey’s economy grows sufficiently between now and a future accession, its large population would be a big help. Today, of course, adding a poor and heavily-populated member state would be a great strain. But then, of course, Turkey is not going to be added today.

The other side of this coin is that a single member state (France) may, through its referendum, have a disproportionate influence on the decision whether or not to admit Turkey. One can imagine a hypothetical situation of 24 member states wanting Turkey to join and 1 member state refusing to let them in. In effect, 40 million French voters would have a veto on a major decision about the extent of the EU.

This leaves the democrat who approves of citizen consultation in a dilemma.