The dynamics of EU accession: Turkish travails in comparative perspective

Abstract

For several years, an air of crisis has been hanging over European integration. Ambitious plans for political deepening have run into trouble while monetary cooperation has not opened the way to political union. The European institutional structures are under strain after the recent Enlargement. The latter added some difficult new partners, not all committed to the cause of integration. Meanwhile, steps towards a common foreign policy have yet to significantly enhance Europe’s global weight. Economic pressures, encouraging calls for national protectionism, seem to be undermining popular support for the fundamental bargain at the heart of integration—the opening of borders. And as if all of this is not enough, the European club is faced with the candidacy of an economically weak applicant with an unstable political past, located on the geographical periphery of Europe. One may well ask, given these circumstances, how was it possible for Greece to enter the European Community? In the first decade of the 21st century, with a heated debate raging over Turkish accession and the future of Europe, the situation outlined above may sound distinctly familiar. But in actual fact, the climate described is that of a period 30 years in the past, when the Enlargement which was proving so difficult to digest was not the Fifth but the First. In the mid-1970s, all the member states’ economies were in recession following the 1973 oil price rise. The latter had also triggered the collapse of the Snake, the EC’s first attempt at monetary cooperation. With economic malaise weakening support for deeper integration, the aim of achieving European Union by the end of the decade, optimistically proclaimed at the Paris summit of 1972 and examined in the Tindemans Report, was quietly dropped. Meanwhile, in launching European Political Cooperation (EPC) in 1973, the EC had taken its first steps towards a common external identity. But the unanimity requirement encouraged agreement at the level of the lowest common denominator. When the EC managed to speak with one voice, during the summer 1974 Cyprus crisis, no-one appeared to be listening. The Greek accession application of June 1975 was thus submitted in an atmosphere of crisis, when the future of the integration process itself was presented as being under threat. In January 1976, the Report on European Union,