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EU and Turkey focus on energy cooperation
The European Union and Turkey are spotlighting their strategic energy cooperation in a bid to keep the lights on in Ankara's troubled bid for EU membership.
- Reuters
- Published: 00:00 June 9, 2007
Istanbul : The European Union and Turkey are spotlighting their strategic energy cooperation in a bid to keep the lights on in Ankara's troubled bid for EU membership.
They staged a conference last week to underline the candidate state's growing importance as an energy bridge between Europe, the Middle East and the Caspian basin.
At a time when the election of French President Nicolas Sarkozy, opposed to Turkish EU entry, has deepened doubts over Ankara's chances of joining the 27-nation bloc, EU Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn pointed to energy as one key reason to keep the negotiations going.
"This was a very significant signal of the shared strategic interests between the EU and Turkey, and of the continuation of the accession process," Rehn said.
Energy Minister Hilmi Guler pointed at a map with flashing pipelines - some existing, some under construction and others still on the drawing board - criss-crossing Turkey on their way to keep the lights on in Europe.
Turkey, he said, was becoming Europe's vital fourth energy corridor, diversifying its sources of supply to balance the flow of oil and gas from Russia, North Africa and the North Sea.
The Baku-Ceyhan pipe-line came on stream last year, pumping one million barrels of Azerbaijani oil a day to the Mediterranean, loosening Russia's stranglehold on Caspian routes.
The planned Nabucco pipeline would pump gas from Iran, Iraq, the Caspian and possibly Russia via Bulgaria, Romania and Hungary to Austria.
Not that simple
EU projections show that despite ambitious goals for energy efficiency and renewable fuels, the bloc will be increasingly dependent on imported hydrocarbons.
With relations between Brussels and Moscow strained by a range of disputes, and unease in Europe over Russian gas monopoly Gazprom's grasp on pipelines and supplies, the case for embracing Turkey might seem overwhelming.
But things are not that simple. For one, the EU can and does import oil and gas via Turkey without admitting it as a member. None of Europe's other energy suppliers is a candidate. Nor can a Turko-sceptical west European public necessarily be convinced to take in the poor, secular, but mainly Muslim country of 74 million because of its geostrategic importance as an energy hub on the hinge of Europe, the Middle East and Asia.
Indeed, a film projected at the conference showing Istanbul's Bosphorus bridge with the slogan "step into another continent" appeared to recall Sarkozy's contention that Turkey is not European.
Disputes over Cyprus have slowed Turkey's accession talks. Domestic tension between the military and a government accused by critics of a hidden Islamist agenda also raised questions about Turkey's European credentials.
The EU is pressing Turkey to become a full member of the European Energy Community, which creates a legal framework for investment, competition and regulation. But Ankara is stalling, partly because it is wary of uncoupling energy cooperation from its EU accession process, but also because it fears that as a non-EU member it will not be treated as an equal partner in the Energy Community.
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