Ankara should be wary of Brussels

Earlier this month Turkey’s bid to join the European Union crept past the tipping point from possibility to probability. The European Commission recommended that accession negotiations be opened with Ankara, and the outgoing enlargement commissioner Günter Verheugen announced that ‘no further obstacles remain’ on Turkey’s path. The news sent the Turkish press into frenzies of enthusiasm, with headlines screaming, ‘Europe, here we come!’, as though egging on the national sports team in the Euro championships, or a conquering Turkish army on its way to, say, Vienna. While no one was actually dancing in the streets, they no doubt will when the EU’s Council of Ministers sets a starting date for talks come December. Turkey joining the EU will be a great thing for the Union. However, despite the fact that most Turks equate entering the EU with winning the lottery, it will be a terrible thing for Turkey.

That Turkey will change the EU for the better is clear — the bigger the Union, the greater the centripetal forces within it, and the more difficult it will be to create a United States of Europe ruled from Brussels. When the former French president Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, author of the controversial new European constitution, said that Turkey’s accession would be ‘the end of Europe’, he meant the end of an introspective, protectionist, over-regulated, Franco-German-dominated Europe. That’s exactly the reason why the French — with the rather odd exception of President Jacques Chirac — continue to oppose Turkish accession, and why British prime ministers have consistently supported it.

Sadly, the deal doesn’t look so good for Turkey itself. As Daniel Hannan has so forcefully argued in these pages, countries like Iceland and Norway, which have chosen to stay on the fringes of the Union but not be in it, can reap great economic benefits.