A great leap urgently needed

Alas, the expected has happened. The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) decided on Tuesday to reopen the monitoring procedure with Turkey, thereby lowering its level of democracy. The very same council, which Turkey helped found in 1949, ended Turkey's monitoring in 2004 as a result of the reforms realized by the then newly founded Justice and Development Party (AKP) government. Now everyone is wondering if Turkey's membership process will be suspended.

A critical European Union summit is taking place over the weekend in Malta, where the foreign ministers of the member states are gathering, including Turkish Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu. Technically, the EU ministers could take the decision to suspend negotiations with Turkey. Yet such a decision would require a unanimous vote. However, this seems to be very unlikely at the moment since, first of all, the members have not reached such a consensus yet. Second, they would first need to wait for the results of the ongoing presidential elections in France.

The more possible scenario is as follows: The EU foreign ministers will probably pass the buck onto the European Commission, asking for a re-evaluation of whether Turkey meets the Copenhagen criteria. According to my sources, this step will most probably be taken in June. Then the commission will publish a report only after the elections in Germany, which will take place in September.

In the event the report goes against Turkey (concluding that it doesn't fulfill the democratic criteria), then the Council of Europe could decide to freeze negotiations with Turkey. However, this time it would not need a unanimous vote; a qualified majority would suffice since the European Commission would have taken a role in the process.
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