Under the slogan ‘No to a Turkish Europe!’ some opponents of the European Constitution are calling on voters to merge the issues of the Constitution and Turkey’s application for accession. They say that the best way to prevent Turkey from joining the European Union is to reject the Constitution.
Quite the reverse is true.
First of all, the two issues are clearly different: one concerns the rules governing the way the club works, the other the identity of its members. The truth of this lies in the fact that alongside those in favour of saying ‘yes’ to both (Jacques Chirac, the majority of the Socialist Party) or ‘no’ to both (Laurent Fabius, Philippe de Villiers, Jean-Marie Le Pen), we find supporters of ‘no’ to the Constitution and ‘yes’ to Turkey (the Socialist Party minority and the Communist Party) while the UMP, the UDF, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing and major socialist figures (Robert Badinter) are campaigning for ‘yes’ to the Constitution and ‘no’ to Turkey. In any case, that is why these two separate issues are to be dealt with in two separate referendums.
Furthermore, the text of the Constitution submitted for referendum no more provides for Turkey’s accession than does the Treaty of Nice. In legal terms this means that one or other text would have to be amended either before or at the same time as the accession treaty. In particular, the position of the new Member State both within the institutions (right to vote, number of MEPs) and in relation to the budget would have to be defined beforehand, as expressly stated by the European Council of 17 December.
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