NRC HANDELSBLAD INTERNATIONAL: Despite the slow progress, Turkey is reminding Brussels that it is still very much intent on joining the European Union.
For once, the topic is not democracy, human rights or gas pipelines. Turkish diplomats are in Brussels since Tuesday to discuss tax reform with the European Commission. If Turkey wants to join the European Union one day, it will also have to adapt its tax system to the European rules.
But the most important message coming out of Brussels and Ankara is that negotiations, which began in 2005 after Turkey was officially recognised as a candidate for membership in 1999, are in fact still ongoing.
Very slowly Turkey is edging closer to EU membership, despite the fact that French president Nicolas Sarkozy and German chancellor Angela Merkel have said they don't want Turkey to join, and despite the fact that many extreme-right parties did well in the European parliament elections in June by campaigning against Turkish membership.
With the elections out of the way, the Turkish government found it necessary to remind the EU countries that it is still intent on joining the EU as promised. Last week, Turkey sent its prime minister and its foreign and European affairs ministers to Brussels to repeat this loudly - much louder than is customary among EU officials and Turkish diplomats.
During a breakfast meeting with journalists, prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan called those European politicians opposing Turkish membership "narrow-minded" and "populist". It was "wrong", he said, to use Turkey as a campaign tool. Erdogan: "We will never give up. We do our homework and we're making progress." >>> Petra de Koning in Brussels | Wednesday, July 01, 2009
