"EU wants the penny and the bun: neither with Turkey nor without
Fatma Yilmaz
The latest news about Turkey-EU relations has come from the EU side whose term-presidency is conducted by Finland. The CNN Turk has written that the Finnish presidency has just launched a new initiative in order to provide a progress to overcome the deadlock in terms of Turkey’s EU bid. According to the news, the Finnish initiative aims at opening the eight chapters for negotiations, which were blocked by the EU not to open unless Turkey fulfills its responsibilities emanating from the Customs Union Additional Protocol. The Finnish proposal has a conditionality base according to which Turkey has to open its one substantial port to the Greek Cypriots. The so-called new initiative is called as ‘window formula’ and it seems to get supports from the UK, Spain, Sweden and Italy apart from Finland, the owner of the proposal. I mentioned it as ‘so-called’ initiative simply because this is a similar formula which Turkey had offered to the EU side just before the last European Summit taken place on 14-15 December. Intending to prevent the deadlock expected to be on Turkey-EU relations due to the port issue, Turkey had offered to open one port and one airport for the Greek Cypriot ships and planes and also to open the Famagusta port for the international direct trade under the Turkish administration."
More:Turkish Weekly Opinion - EU wants the penny and the bun: neither with Turkey nor without