Today's Date:

Foreign Policy

Press conference given by Michel Barnier, Minister of Foreign Affairs (excerpts).

Tours, December 3, 2004

EU CONSTITUTION REFERENDUM/FRENCH SOCIALIST PARTY BALLOT

THE MINISTER – The Socialist Party has conducted a genuine debate among its members. This debate has contributed and will contribute to the dialogue we're calling for. The result, as Jacques Chirac has said, is good news for Europe and for the European debate. (...)

TURKEY/EU

THE MINISTER – The issue for 17 December isn't Turkey's membership, it's whether we open or don't open, when and under what conditions we open the accession negotiations which have never been opened with Turkey. This has to be explained, since it's the truth. If these negotiations are opened, they are going to go on a long time. President Chirac has said, and I repeat it after him, that we hope they can succeed. If, for one reason or another, they don't, it will very probably be necessary to provide for a special link with Turkey; we wish them to succeed after all the stages have been completed and all the conditions met. Should they be successful, whatever the circumstances – what President Chirac has said is extremely important in order to avoid this conflation, here too –, it's the French who will decide. If, one day, there's an accession treaty to ratify – I can't say if there will be – that day the people will be consulted. No one will take the decision on Turkey's future accession in place of the French, the French will take that decision.

THE MINISTER – France is in favour of the opening of these negotiations. She wishes them to succeed; this is the very clear feeling President Chirac expressed on the importance of Turkey being inside the European entity. We wish this process to be opened because there are a lot of stages to complete and a lot of conditions to be met and all this will have to be done. President Chirac has himself said – and he repeated it again yesterday in Lübeck, where I was at his side during his meeting with the German Chancellor – that it is indeed necessary to provide for the possibility, for one reason or another, of these negotiations not succeeding and it will probably be necessary to provide, on 17 December, for that option of a special link with Turkey.

Let me remind you that we have had a dialogue with Turkey for 40 years and that country has for 40 years, year after year, striven to come closer to the European model. There are still a lot of efforts to make, but we can't forget the work and dialogue of the past 40 years. We are working in this vein on the European Council conclusions, on the basis, I remind you, of what the European Commission has proposed. Indeed, the European Commission has proposed the conditions under which, in its view, these negotiations should be opened in the framework of a process which has to remain open-ended./.