All Fools’ Day or moment of truth ?
A series of absurdities may well come to an unfortunate head on 3 October.
European absurdity. To regard a country as ‘European’ when 95% of its territory lies in Asia Minor is implicitly to accept that the European Union will have no frontiers. On what grounds would we then refuse entry in the future to Russia, Armenia, the countries of the Caucasus, Israel and the future Palestinian state, and all the other countries along the shores of the Mediterranean? A British-style Europe conceived as an economic area, without identity and without borders, would then triumph over the French vision of Europe as a power, a major player on the international stage, with its own model for society and its own values.
Democratic absurdity. This is the most surprising and the most shocking aspect, whatever opinion one might have on Turkish accession. No decision as important for the future of the Continent will ever have been taken, since the end of the cold war, with so little democratic debate and with such deliberate disregard for the profound feelings expressed by public opinion. The most recent poll (IFOP, published in Valeurs Actuelles on 30 September) shows that nearly two out of three French people are against Turkish accession, including 70% of UMP and UDF sympathisers and a majority of both socialists and communists. This popular sentiment is shared in at least ten Member States.
If there were sound reasons to justify the accession of Turkey, why such determination to keep them out of the public debate for six years? If citizens were thought too ignorant of geopolitical realities for their opinion on the composition of the European club to be taken into account, why at the same time ask them to approve a decision on the rulebook of that very club – the Constitution? And more especially, after seeing how unease over the identity of Europe, the speed at which enlargements are taking place and the lack of a clearly drawn frontier played such an important role in the ‘no’-camp’s victory in France and the Netherlands, how could the approach to Turkey go ahead without the slightest pause for reflection? The French Prime Minister understood the position and grasped the opportunity offered by the scandalous refusal of his Turkish opposite number to recognise Cyprus. To no avail.
Finally, diplomatic absurdity. Whether or not there will be a crisis with Ankara is not the question: the crisis has been programmed in since the Helsinki European Council in December 1999. On that day, behind closed doors, and without any prior consultation back home, Europe’s leaders made undertakings to Turkey which they do not have the political means to fulfil. That is why the negotiations are opening in a climate of mutual mistrust, which can only become more acrimonious at every stage – and some thirty are planned.
Common sense tells us that it is always painful, certainly, but easier to end an affair than to end an engagement, easier to end an engagement than to end a marriage, easier to end a marriage without children than a marriage with children. It is not right to continue deluding the citizens of Europe on one hand and the Turks on the other by leaving each side to hope for the outcome each prefers. Both have a right to the truth. And the incontestable truth is that, since the major crisis which arose last spring, the European Union has neither the institutions nor the budget, nor the popular support, which it would need to make a credible offer of accession to Turkey.
If people are not told the truth, 3 October will remain All Fools’ Day. Let us have the courage to offer the Turks another alternative, a scheme for privileged partnership. Let us define it together with them. It could serve as a model for our other neighbours – Russia, the Middle East, the Maghreb – whom we must also help finally to take their place in the camp of democracy and modernity and with whom we must maintain relations of kinship, not just neighbourliness. And it is Europe relaunched as a political union which will decide together with those concerned, on an equal footing and with transparency and respect for democracy, the future stages of our common future.
Alain Lamassoure, 29 September 2005.