MORNING BID EUROPE-Cold Turkey in Brussels
by Reuters
Tuesday, 13 December 2016 08:31 GMT
LONDON, Dec 13 (Reuters) - Much of the buzz at today's meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brussels today will be about whether their future Washington counterpart will be an oilman from Texas. Donald Trump is expected to name Exxon-Mobil Corp's Rex Tillerson as his choice for secretary of state early US time on Tuesday, a nomination that will raise major questions in Europe about Tillerson's ties to Vladimir Putin's Russia. First up on the official agenda, however, is a bid led by Austria and the Netherlands to suspend talks with Turkey on its EU membership over the massive post-coup purge ordered by Recep Tayyip Erdogan. It is not clear that the two countries will get backing from other states to do so, especially as Turkey's help is needed to stem migrant inflows into Europe. But any accession hopes Ankara had been cherishing have long since dimmed anyway, as enlargement of the EU looks gradually to be coming to a halt. Now it looks as though attempts to revive Macedonia's stalled EU bid will face added questions after it emerged last night that veteran national leader Nikola Gruevski won this weekend's election. Brussels has long been a tough critic of Gruevski's record on safeguarding democracy and the rule of law.
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