EU enlargement

par Dimitris Konstantakopoulos La premier ministre britannique Theresa May s’est précipitée à Ankara pour discuter de Chypre, du Moyen-Orient et de l’admission de la Turquie...

 by Dimitris Konstantakopoulos The British Prime Minister Theresa May is rushing to Ankara to discuss Cyprus, the Middle East and Turkey’s accession to the EU....

In 1974 Kissinger was able to prepare his Cyprus coup first by deceiving everybody about his real intentions, including the Greek dictator Ioannides, Archbishop Makarios and Soviet FM Gromyko (when he met both of them in Nicosia weeks before the coup), the British government and even his own President Richard Nixon, probably exploiting his serious troubles with Watergate.

Enlargement, widely regarded as the greatest single achievement of the European Union since the end of the Cold War, and occasion for more or less unqualified self-congratulation, has left one inconspicuous thorn in the palm of Brussels. The furthest east of all the EU’s new acquisitions, even if the most prosperous and democratic, has been a tribulation to its establishment, one that neither fits the uplifting narrative of the deliverance of captive nations from Communism, nor furthers the strategic aims of Union diplomacy, indeed impedes them.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s statement that his goal in Syria was to end the rule of Bashar Assad has caused consternation in the Kremlin, with officials saying it contradicted previous assurances and was out of sync with Moscow’s take on the situation.

Suspending European Union membership negotiations would be the wrong signal for Europe to send Turkey. The move, set to be debated in the European Parliament, would eliminate what’s left of the EU’s leverage over Ankara and further erode the credibility of Turkish liberals, whose European-friendly narrative has already made them an endangered species.

No more than two days were needed for the CETA text, only just signed in front of the cameras, to be rejected again. The German Greens announced their intention of blocking its ratification, in its present form, in the Bundesrat, something that is within their capacities given the way that its system functions. Is the participation of the Bundesrat indispensable for ratification of the treaty? German jurists are working on this question, and it is thorny.

By essentially denying the principle of popular sovereignty, it is also denying the principle of national sovereignty, the (relatively) independent character of the Greek state. Greece occupies a strategic place in the Eastern Mediterranean, on the route connecting Russia with the Mediterranean and Western Europe with the Middle East. Its independence was never completely tolerated by the British and then the American empires. Greeks were also suspected of leaning towards Russians, or at least this was the argument justifying the innumerable Western interventions in this country.

There are many aspects of life in Britain that those who voted leave hope will improve with Brexit. On holiday in Suffolk this summer (where 60% voted leave) my wife Kate and I were surprised to be told by the skipper on a coastal boat trip that Brussels was responsible for problems facing the Avocet population on Orford Ness: in a fit of ecological correctness gone

What do you think about the current government led by Poroshenko? It is really criminal and committed the full spectrum of crimes against humanity. In order to achieve their goals Poroshenko and his team has been destroying the basic state institutions. They are supporting and promoting radicalism. I could bring many examples for that