BRUSSELS, 10 Jul. () –
The European Commission has responded this Monday to the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, that the process of accession to the European Union depends on the “merits” of each candidate country and not on “separate” processes, after the latter has linked the options from Sweden to join NATO to the unfreezing of talks so that Turkey becomes part of the community club.
“There are two processes that take place in parallel. The enlargement of NATO and the entry of new members, by one route, and, in a separate process, that of accession to the European Union. They are separate processes,” the spokeswoman has settled of the Community Executive Dana Spinant, when asked at a press conference in Brussels.
In the case of entry into the Union, Spinant wanted to emphasize that it is a “very structured” process with “very clear” steps that the aspiring countries must go through without their achievement being linked “to other procedures”.
“It is based on the merit of each country and the pace of the following steps is determined by the progress and work done by the candidates,” insisted the community spokesperson.
The European Union and Turkey began accession talks in 2005, after the Eurasian country obtained candidate country status in 1999, but as a consequence of the democratic regression that the latest Brussels assessments detected in this country, the Twenty-seven decided in June 2018 freeze the process.
In this context, and just one day after the NATO summit begins in the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius, Erdogan has called on the community bloc to reactivate accession talks in exchange for Ankara unblocking Sweden’s entry into the Atlantic Alliance , a process that the Turkish regime paralyzes because it accuses the Swedish government of giving refuge to members of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which the Turkish authorities consider a terrorist organization.
