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Turkey Knocks: Will EU Let It Enter?

30 March 2010 02:38 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. Turkey’s desire to join the European Union has the virtue of being consistent. It was in 1987 that the country first applied to accede to the EU, and it has been knocking on the door ever since, APA reports quoting Online.wsj.com web-page.
The fault lines that have become apparent, both within the euro zone and the broader EU grouping, have done nothing to quell Turkey’s enthusiasm for joining the club. The chance to export some more of its jobless may be one of the attractions: Last year, the country’s unemployment rate rose to 14%, up three percentage points on the previous year, against an EU average of 9.5%. Yet it isn’t clear that the work would be there for Turks keen to take advantage of the freedom of movement that EU membership confers.
And there is a price to EU membership. Today the U.K.-based lobby group Open Europe releases figures showing that EU legislation puts a heavy burden on member states. It calculates that, since 1998, EU regulations have cost the U.K. Â£124 billion ($185 billion). The truth is probably not quite so stark. Many of the regulations would have been implemented by national governments whether or not the EU had imposed them. Compliance, however, is costly. Nevertheless, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is taking the opportunity of Angela Merkel’s visit to his country to try once more to push Turkey’s case for full membership.
He is wasting his time. The German chancellor, having stood her ground so staunchly over bailing out Greece, isn’t about to do a U-turn on this matter. She knows that, if her countryfolk were livid at the prospect of their cash being used to bail out profligate Greece, they would be positively incandescent were she to soften her stance on Turkey. President Nicolas Sarkozy of France would face a similar uprising of anger.
The reason isn’t Turkey’s long-running squabble over Cyprus, although its refusal to open its ports and airspace to EU member Cyprus provides useful tactical cover for those opposed to full EU membership for Turkey. Neither is it the need for Turkey to speed up its political reforms. It is Turkey’s overwhelming embrace of Islam which is the real, but unspoken, issue. With a population of 72.5 million, Turkey would be second only to Germany in scale if it were to join the EU. Although the government of the country is secular, estimates put the proportion of the population which is Muslim at around 99%. Although religion is not the driving force it once was in large parts of Europe, there is a widespread belief that including an overwhelmingly Muslim country in the club would drastically change its character.
There is an opposing school of thought, which argues that there would be positive benefits from having the EU embrace a Muslim country, but opinion polls have shown that to be a minority view. Hence Ms. Merkel on her brief visit to Turkey won’t be budged from her view that Turkey can be a "privileged partner" of the EU, enjoying a long-established customs union for instance, but it cannot be the 28th member of the European Union
Instead of protesting, Mr. Erdogan might anyhow consider whether he really wants to join a club where the rules could soon change fairly drastically. Greece got its bond issue away yesterday but at a punitive interest rate that only exacerbates its problems going forward. Spain looks perilously close to similar difficulties, as does Portugal.
The support arrangements agreed to by the euro-zone countries, incorporating Ms. Merkel’s insistence that the International Monetary Fund should be involved, might not hold for long. A retreat to a smaller euro zone is becoming a real possibility. The rejects would then join the slower speed Europe currently outside the single currency. Turkey might find itself slightly more welcome in that grouping.
The duties of ownership
The EU’s relatively new commissioner for the Internal Market, Michel Barnier, has plans to address the regulatory burden on businesses. However, in his determination to find ways of making owners of businesses think long-term, he deserves support.
In an interview with Financial News, Mr. Barnier said of the financial crisis: "Many shareholders acted with a short-term perspective rather than acting with the long-term viability of the institution they own in mind." This isn’t an observation unique to him, but he is well placed to do something to correct the lack of engagement by investors with the businesses they own. He promised to bring forward "initiatives" in this area within the coming months.
One of his aims would be to ensure institutional investors made full use of their voting rights. He is likely to find plenty of support within the G-20 for such a move. Perhaps he should also revisit the issue of short-selling. So-called long-term investors will regularly lend their stock to those who are solely interested in driving down the price. In return for the marginal income they make from stock-lending, they risk jeopardizing the value of their holdings. That doesn’t seem to amount to joined up thinking!
At last, a Tory tax cut
National Insurance is a British attempt to disguise what is not insurance but is tax. It is an extra levy charged to workers and their employers geared to salaries. It is not earmarked to fund the National Health Service or provide for state pensions. The latter, frighteningly, are unfunded.
The employer’s National Insurance charge is, quite simply, a tax on jobs. The Labour government had legislated to increase NI next year. Now the Conservatives have said they will reverse that increase. With just six weeks to go before the election, at last some clear blue water may be opening up between the two main parties.