Abstract
Turkey’s futures with the European Union has never looked so uncertain. Turkey’s relations with the European Union are at a stalemate, with accession negotiations effectively frozen. Yet, Turkey and the EU have a high degree of functional cooperation, where Turkey complies with the EU acquis. Turkey’s opting into the EU acquis in multiple policy areas, where its voluntary compliance-prior to or an alternative to accession, could be conceptualized as external differentiated integration. Turkey adjusts itself to the EU rules on foreign policy, customs union, Schengen regime, development policy to name a few. This paper looks at the varying degrees of Turkish compliance into the EU acquis, and proposes that Turkey will remain an integral part of the European integration.
Highlights
European integration is passing through turbulent times with uncertainty looming over the United Kingdom’s exit strategy, Western Balkans’ shaky accession process, the European Neighborhood Policy with mixed results for countries in the Eastern Partnership and the South Mediterranean
A candidate since 1999, negotiating for accession since 2005, Turkey’s relations with the European Union have never been so uncertain. This uncertainty is reflected by the European Council on 26 June 2018 with its declaration that “Turkey has been moving further away from the European Union and that accession negotiations have effectively come to a standstill.”1 This was more or less the first formal declaration by the EU that the accession negotiations underway since 2005 is effectively frozen, even though not formally suspended
This paper proposes that Turkey’s relations with the EU have evolved towards a more functional cooperation, attesting different shades of external differentiation, and demonstrates the multiple ways within which this functional cooperation could be empirically observed as a form of external differentiated integration, going beyond accession
Summary
Integrating Diversity in the European Union (InDivEU) is a Horizon 2020 funded research project aimed at contributing concretely to the current debate on the ‘Future of Europe’ by assessing, developing and testing a range of models and scenarios for different levels of integration among EU member states. InDivEU comprises a consortium of 14 partner institutions coordinated by the Robert Schuman Centre at the European University Institute, where the project is hosted by the European Governance and Politics Programme (EGPP). The funders had no role in the study design, data collection or analysis
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