Bulletin n. 1/2017
June 2017
INDICE
  • Section A) The theory and practise of the federal states and multi-level systems of government
  • Section B) Global governance and international organizations
  • Section C) Regional integration processes
  • Section D) Federalism as a political idea
    • Martin Natalie
    How the EU came to open accession negotiations with Turkey: The role of the “well-placed Brits”
    in Journal of European Integration History , vol. 21, n. 2 ,  2015 ,  231-250
    Considering the current stalemate of Turkey-EU relations it is timely to ask why accession negotiations were opened at all as Turkey was, and remains, a controversial candidate for normative and cultural reasons. This paper uses Normative Institutionalism to explain how, in 2004, member states were “rhetorically entrapped”, by unprecedented constitutional progress in Turkey between 2002 and 2004, into agreeing to open accession negotiations with Turkey. Furthermore this progress was made with the deliberate assistance of the UK government acting from wider, and long standing, geostrategic motives with the intention of pushing the Turkish case forward. However it concludes that rhetorical entrapment is transitory and the opening of negotiations was meaningless without efforts in Ankara to maintain progress in constitutional reform towards meeting the Copenhagen criteria. Hence, it offered only a temporary respite from stagnation in the accession process and Turkey quickly reverted to its stereotype as a problematic candidate.
    ©2001 - 2020 - Centro Studi sul Federalismo - P. IVA 94067130016