Options for the EU-Turkey Relationship

Source:Carnegie Europe Date:05May2019

As usual, an excellent assessment of  Turkey-EU relations by Marc Pierini which manages to encompass Turkey’s  economic and democratic dilemmas in the process:

This is the paragraph I liked best:

At present, the most realistic option for the rules-based component of this relationship is the modernization of the EU-Turkey Customs Union. With new technologies and vast increases in trade in services, there is a need to upgrade this trade deal, which was concluded more than two decades ago. Its modernization must involve not only the expansion of its scope to services and possibly agriculture but also horizontal areas such as the monitoring of state aid and, more importantly, a more functional dispute-settlement mechanism. The latter is important to resolve the ever-larger number of disagreements over the functioning of the regime.

The key issue is whether Turkey is willing to advance with modernizing the customs union despite the significant impact this could have on the country’s political economy.