A study preparedcommissioned by the European Parliament’s Committee on Foreign Affairs (AFET) and published on Tuesday.
The study, which focuses on methods for assessing the alignment of candidate countries with the EU’s Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP), states that Turkey’s bilateral relations with other enlargement countries were generally positive but remained strained with certain neighboring member states, “particularly Greece and Cyprus.” For this specific indicator, the authors rate Turkey a 3 out of 5, describing the picture as mixed.
ΣΧΕΤΙΚΑ ΑΡΘΡΑ
Special mention is also made of Cyprus in the context of security and defense cooperation. The study notes that Turkey remains the largest non-EU contributor of troops to the EUFOR Althea mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina and a significant contributor to NATO’s KFOR force in Kosovo. At the same time, it reports that Ankara continues to implement a policy of excluding Cyprus from cooperation with NATO. Despite this issue, the authors give Turkey’s security and defense cooperation an overall rating of 4 out of 5.
Cyprus is also mentioned in the historical context of the study, where the authors emphasize that foreign policy divergences evident before a country’s accession may continue even after it joins the EU. As an example, they note that Greece and Cyprus maintained distinct positions toward Turkey even after their accession, highlighting the limitations of pre-accession alignment as an indicator of the future coherence of the CFSP.
According to the study, the current methodology used by the European Commission and the European External Action Service (EEAS) to assess alignment with the CFSP is no longer sufficient to reflect the substantive convergence of candidate countries in foreign policy. The current approach relies heavily on the degree of alignment with statements by the High Representative and with Council decisions, without, according to the study, adequately reflecting the implementation of those decisions, the countries’ political intent, strategic orientation, and actual behavior.
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Revised Methodology Proposed
At the same time, it proposes a revised methodology with ten specific dimensions, including the implementation of restrictive measures, voting in international organizations, relations with third countries, visa policy alignment, cooperation on security and defense issues, export controls, resilience against foreign information manipulation and cyber threats, as well as good-neighborly relations.
Based on the proposed new methodology, Turkey scores 22 out of 50, or 44%, and is classified as a country that is “to some extent aligned.” This percentage is significantly higher than the 4% recorded under the Commission’s current methodology, as the new framework takes into account, beyond formal alignment, Turkey’s mediation efforts, defense cooperation, and other geopolitical contributions.
When the new methodology is applied comparatively, Serbia drops from 63% under the current approach to 44%, Bosnia and Herzegovina from 100% to 52%, Ukraine from 99% to 76%, and Georgia from 40% to 38%. The study attributes these differences, among other things, to weaknesses in the enforcement of sanctions, relations with Russia and China, visa policy issues, and discrepancies between official alignment and practical implementation.
The study also recommends that the Commission and the EEAS create a formal scorecard to assess alignment with the CFSP, which would combine quantitative indicators with qualitative criteria and distinguish between the formal acceptance of statements and their substantive implementation.
Source: KYPE
