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Center-right split over call to stop Turkey from ever joining EU

EPP MEPs consider definitive stance against EU membership for Ankara.

The biggest political group in the European Parliament is divided over where it stands on Turkey’s bid to join the EU, with some MEPs pushing for a definitive statement that the country can never join the bloc.

Members of the center-right European People’s Party spent three days talking through the issue at a brainstorming retreat in the south of France last week without finding a way to agree on it, according to sources who attended. The dispute pits some EPP members who insist that a strong relationship between the EU and Turkey is crucial for addressing the migration crisis against others who worry that Ankara is moving away from European ideals.

At issue is one line in a draft EPP position paper that takes an unusually strong stand against Turkey’s EU membership, stipulating that any new member country “must be geographically entirely located in Europe.” The paper — which was drafted by several MEPs, including Paulo Rangel, and the think tank he chairs, the European Ideas Network — states that by that reasoning “Turkey cannot be a member” of the European Union.

Rank-and-file EPP members are expected to vote later this summer on the language of the paper, which will outline the party’s position on European integration, asylum, foreign policy and economic issues. But first they have to work out the sensitive wording on an issue that will be key in continuing debates in the European Parliament on migration and enlargement.

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The EPP has long claimed that Turkey is not ready for EU membership anytime soon, but has not gone so far as to rule out the country’s ability to join the bloc in the future. But the current language of the EPP’s policy paper is “unequivocal” on the matter, said a Parliament official. “The group never said it in such a clear way.”

While some EPP members said the draft text was only a “basis for discussion,” others said it is not likely to be substantively changed in the coming days — and that it reflects a growing trend among many members of the EPP toward more unconditional opposition to Turkey’s EU membership.

Those MEPs say Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s recent clampdowns on media and human rights have shown that his government is becoming more authoritarian; they also cite fears raised by the recent migration crisis and terrorism threat as reasons to oppose Turkey’s EU membership.

“Those who consider that Turkey should never enter the EU are gaining ground,” said Alain Lamassoure, a senior EPP member in the Parliament. “And this is due to Erdoğan’s recent behavior and the problem caused by the Muslim world in the EU.”

Lamassoure said the language of the paper could also be simply an acknowledgment of political reality, given that any new EU enlargement will require unanimity among the 28 current members, as well as ratification from the European Parliament.

“Among the 28, there will be more than half a dozen countries which will refuse to ratify it,” he said. “At the Parliament, no country would accept to make room for the most populous country in Europe.”

Partnership, not dependency

Also among the advocates of a stronger stance on Turkey in the EPP is the group’s leader in Parliament, Manfred Weber, a German MEP who sent the draft paper to his group’s members. In public statements he has sought to maintain a firm line on the issue of Turkish EU membership. Last month, he wrote on Facebook that the EU’s deal with Ankara on migration was “all about partnership with Turkey, not about dependency, and even less about full EU membership.”

But other leading members of the group said it was wrong to frame Turkey’s EU accession bid as purely a geographical issue.

“We shouldn’t refuse Turkey’s membership to the EU for geographical reasons,” said Elmar Brok, another leading member of the EPP and chairman of the Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee. Brok did not go so far as to say he supported membership for Turkey, instead suggesting the EU could reach a partnership agreement with the country that gave it some benefits without giving it full status as an EU member — an idea once shared by German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

He said the wording was important given Turkey’s cooperation on migration and security issues.

“We need Turkey on migration to stop human trafficking, we have to talk to them, to support them,” Brok said. “It can be a member of Europe, but not of the European Union. The country should meet our standards first.”

The issue of Turkey’s membership has been at the center of debates ever since EU leaders decided at a 1999 summit in Helsinki to grant Turkey the status of a candidate country. In 2002, Hans-Gert Pöttering, the former European Parliament president and EPP leader, said a majority of his group believed that “Turkey is not ready and it would not be the right time” for it to joint the EU.

The language of the policy paper is stronger than the position defended recently by Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of the European Commission, also an EPP member. In an interview in March, Juncker said Turkey won’t be ready for EU membership “for ten years or more,” but didn’t rule out the possibility that it could one day fulfill the criteria and join.

Juncker helped push through the EU’s agreement with Turkey in March that Brussels would resuscitate the long-dormant enlargement talks in exchange for Ankara’s help on stemming the flow of refugees to Europe.

“A lot of pressure was put from EPP members to Juncker on this,” the officials said. “Some delegations just don’t care about this EU-Turkey deal, like Cyprus and Greece. A lot of people are not very excited about this deal.”