LISBON EXPLAINED:SEVERAL NO campaign groups have raised the spectre of Turkish accession to the EU and specifically concerns about the effect of mass immigration in undermining workers' rights and of pressures on the agriculture budget.
The desirability of enlarging the EU to include Turkey (population 75 million), several Balkan countries and Iceland, is often cited as an argument for easing decision- making in the union and hence for approving Lisbon. And some EU leaders have made it clear they do not believe any enlargement can proceed if the treaty is defeated, but talks on accession with Turkey would not stop.
Crucially, enlargement, and Turkey in particular, are not referred to in the treaty at all – accession negotiations are a separate political process whose outcome, if positive, will require a separate accession treaty.
And, in truth, Turkish membership is not remotely a prospect within 10 to 15 years because of political opposition within the Union – Ireland supports accession – and the drawn-out nature of bringing Turkey’s economy and laws into line with EU standards.
The UK Independence Party’s leaflet asks “If Nice helped to bring us ½ million migrants, how many more will Lisbon bring?”
The dramatic rise in migration in the last decade was the result not of the Nice Treaty but of the enlargement of the union to central and eastern Europe in 2005-07. Nice, and Lisbon if passed, will simply ensure that the enlarged union is one which can take decisions without gridlock.
Meanwhile, the access by Turkish workers to the EU is currently a matter for each individual member state to decide, and this will be the case throughout the accession negotiations with the EU (whatever their outcome, and whether the Lisbon Treaty is in place or not). Lisbon may harmonise some immigration procedures, but each member state retains a veto on numbers.
The Negotiation Framework (ie the mandate on which the EU negotiates with Turkey), adopted by the EU in 2005 when accession negotiations with Turkey started, explicitly foresees the possibility of “long transitional periods, derogations, specific arrangements or permanent safeguard clauses . . . in areas such as freedom of movement of persons, structural policies or agriculture”.
On the agricultural front, the EU already has a very preferential trade deal with Turkey – 70 per cent of Turkish agricultural products enter tariff free, while many other products pay little.
Turkey would add some 20 per cent in area and three million holdings to the arable land currently under cultivation in the EU. The structure of Turkish farming is very similar to that in Bulgaria and Romania with holdings about half the size of the EU average.
Reform and income support under the Common Agricultural Policy will clearly cost a huge amount of money, but such commitments will not arise for at least a decade, and have nothing to do with the Lisbon Treaty.
