Despite the recent revival of optimism about the forthcoming Turkey negotiations following the apparent resolution of the ‘adultery ban’ issue, it is clear to everyone that significant hurdles still remain to be overcome. Among these may now need to be added a referendum on Turkish membership in France.
Turkey will not join the European Union for [...]

Further to that business about the Turkish government advancing, and then as quickly aborting, plans to criminalise adultery, the very valuable ?????????? (Histologion) notes that:
It’s a good thing that the state of Virginia won’t be applying for EU membership anytime soon, since it is one of the 23 US states, where adultery is considered a [...]

The European Commission won’t release its report on the possibility of opening accesion talks with Turkey until 6 October. But after expansion commissioner G?nter Verheugen’s comments yesterday, the report will not be much of a surprise. ‘There are’, said Verheugen, ‘no further barriers‘ to beginning talks.
(All the links to outside sources in this post, incidentally, [...]

The Turkish Justice and Development party (AKP) seems to be backing down on the criminalisation of adultery agenda. This is a welcome development and, for once, an example of where targeted EU pressure may be effective. It also seems to be the case that external pressure is working in tandem with internal processes for once:
Civil [...]

Whilst noting that the EU Commission is trying to gently nudge Turkey on the criminalisation of adultery issue - European Commission spokesman Jean-Christophe Filori told a Brussels news conference that the proposed law “could trigger confusion and damage the perception in the European Union of Turkey’s reform efforts” - this post is [...]

Not if people like single market commissioner Frits Bolkestein gets his way they aren’t. According to the FT the European Commission is expected to say on October 6 that Turkey has reformed enough for membership negotiations to begin. If this happens EU leaders will then decide in December whether to endorse those conclusions [...]

The bath in question here is not of the kind brought to mind by a recent popular film with a similar title, but rather a deeper, broader (more historical?) one, the kind of bath which might even have appealed to good old Hegel himself: when learning to swim what you need is not a [...]

Leaving aside political considerations (I would certainly fast-track Turkey’s EU accession process for many, many reasons), the economic attraction of Turkey as an EU member state is rapidly making itself felt. Just look at these numbers from Morgan Stanley’s Cerhan Sevic:
According to our estimates, Turkey?s overall productivity growth accelerated from an average of 2.1% a [...]

Nine centuries after Pope Urban II sent the first Crusaders off to fight “the Turk,” 321 years after the Ottoman army besieged Vienna, Turkey and Europe are approaching a historic encounter. In December, leaders of European Union countries will vote on whether to begin negotiations that would lead to Turkey’s joining the EU. Every day [...]

Missed most of the first half of Milosevic’s trial?

Since the case began in February 2002, a tangle of bureaucratic setbacks has mired the trial in costly delays. Milosevic is accused of 66 counts of human rights abuses, from violations of the “customs of war” to genocide. After 298 witnesses, 30,000 pages of documents and [...]