Accession negotiations with Turkey are now a fact.

By nature and design, these negotiations must be directed at accession.

Negotiations with Turkey would be lengthy and accession may not occur before 2015.

Targeted technical assistance shall be provided to acceding landlocked developing countries on a priority basis, covering all stages of the accession negotiations and taking into account the high costs involved in the accession negotiations.

That government has undertaken various important democratic reforms and initiated accession negotiations with the EU.

These steps led to the European Commission's recent recommendation to begin accession negotiations with Turkey.

Turkey would then have to conduct dual negotiations over Cyprus and over its own EU accession.

This autumn, the European Commission is scheduled to issue a progress report on accession negotiations with Turkey.

In March 2001, the Swiss people refused in a popular vote to start accession negotiations with the EU.

Many of them hold key positions in important bilateral and multilateral negotiations, including those for Vietnam's WTO accession.

With a slowdown in accession negotiations, Turkish politicians will have less incentive to continue the reforms necessary for membership.

But pro European euphoria proved short lived for all practical purposes, the accession negotiations are now at an impasse.

Domestic support for EU accession was 70 at the start of the negotiations, but is now closer to 40 .

Moreover, members of the European Convention could not have been blind to the possibility of early accession negotiations with Turkey.

Had the start of accession negotiations been postponed or canceled, Turkey s pro Europeans would have suffered from a nationalist backlash.

Should the EU consider the accession criteria as having been fulfilled, it must decide to open negotiations in early 2005.

Special priority should be given to facilitating and accelerating negotiations with acceding landlocked developing counties through simplified and streamlined accession procedures.

It is crucial to ensure fair and equitable terms of accession, commensurate with the trade, financial and development needs of acceding developing countries, and increased support in all stages of the accession negotiations, as well as to address specific needs of newly acceded countries in the Doha work programme negotiations.

At the same time, Turkey moved decisively onto the path of political and administrative reform in order to start EU accession negotiations.

A tempest in a teapot is perhaps the best description of the recent squabbles about opening the European Union s accession negotiations with Turkey.

And, while the Europeans have formally kept to their decision to begin accession negotiations with Turkey, they have done little to advance the cause.

Now the accession negotiations have started, and 35 chapters covering everything from agriculture to energy, competition, environment, employment, social policy, and beyond must be opened.

They also struggled to pursue a united approach to Azerbaijan and Ukraine, and continued to seek a coherent approach to Turkey as accession negotiations remained blocked.

Pressure on Croatia and Serbia to arrest and hand over suspects a condition of EU accession negotiations has yielded several extraditions and may result in more.

The decade following the oil crisis of 1979 was marked by a spike in unemployment, fiscal paralysis, and, indeed, frozen accession negotiations for Spain and Portugal.

The issue of WTO accession appeared to have been pushed to the back burner, probably as a result of members' preoccupation with the Doha development agenda negotiations.

Accession

Accession.

Accession

The European Council, rather than the European Commission, is increasingly setting the benchmarks for delineating progress in accession talks, thus largely determining the pace at which negotiations proceed.

The size of these transfers, however, would depend on the EU's financial policies at the time of admission, the outcome of accession negotiations, and economic developments in Turkey.

In fact, enlargement fatigue has been the dominant feature of EU relations with the western Balkan states and explains why the accession process has been flat lining along a path of frozen negotiations and mutual mistrust toward an increasingly uncertain destination. This remains the case even after Croatia s accession.

UNCTAD has also been providing extensive training to and building the capacity of the least developed countries in trade negotiations and commercial diplomacy, including on issues related to accession to WTO.

Calls on OIC Member States who have acceded to the WTO to support and facilitate negotiations for the accession of the other Member States which have not yet joined the WTO.

Accession to WTO

This autumn, the European Commission is scheduled to issue a progress report on accession negotiations with Turkey. A dangerous situation may well emerge, as this report threatens to derail the whole process.

While the high court decision and the appeal to the electorate means that Turkish democracy has dodged a bullet for now, the progress of Turkey s EU accession negotiations has been further slowed.

12 Austria (accession) 25 September 2003, Oman (ratification) 12 March 2004, Denmark (accession) 16 November 2004, Mauritius (accession) 22 December 2004, Chile (ratification) 8 February 2005.

Accession shall be effected by the deposit of an instrument of accession with the depositary.

Accession shall be effected by the deposit of an instrument of accession with the depositary.

Accession shall be effected by the deposit of an instrument of accession with the depositary.

It was also agreed that a Special Committee would be created in order to analyze measures that could be taken to accelerate the accession negotiations and to make them as least costly as possible.

Signature, ratification, acceptance, approval, accession

Ratification, acceptance, approval or accession

Europe would strengthen itself economically and militarily if Turkey became a member, and it should revive accession negotiations on the same basis as other member states if Turkey meets the political criteria, including press freedom.