HOW DID THEY (E.G. SPAIN, POLAND) PREPARE FOR THE EU ACCESSION? LESSONS FOR TURKEY

PAWEL SAMECKI

Board member of the NBP & Former Undersecretary for European Integration of Poland

Thank you Mr. Chairman, I would like also to join my colleagues in thanking the organizers for inviting me and I will immediately jump to the main subject of our meeting. We were asked by our moderator to speak about similarities and differences between our experience and the Turkish experience so far and in the future so first point, which I’d like to make, is to strengthen what my Check colleague has said. The point of departure is entirely different in our case as compared with you, 15 years ago when we started thinking about our road to the EU, we were in very unfavorable position, our economy was shattered, it was destroyed by the command economy by the system, for example in the Polish case between 1988 and 1991 we suffered from a 20% declining GDP so you can imagine that the situation was entirely different, you are in a much more favorable situation because you are in a free trade zone while we’ve achieved this status of free trade zone with the EU except for agricultural products like in your case as late as 2000 so it was 5 years ago so definitely it is a better position for you. Second point about preparations and negotiation it is that much is based on mutual confidence and I think it is worthwhile to build this confidence, why or in what form simply any government which wants to be treated seriously has to keep the promises, sometimes it is very bureaucratic and nasty, tedious, boring work, if you promise that in one year’s time you will deliver a plan of restructuring of index thru X, you will have to deliver in one year’s time this plan otherwise you will not be credible, sometimes in the past we failed and then we were somehow panelized by lack of confidence. Next point which is different, it is about the position of Turkey as a single country which will negotiate accession, we were in a group initially in the group of six countries then in a group of 12 countries the reduced down to 10 countries. So apparently there is a substantial difference, we were in a group and you’ll be alone but these are only appearances. In fact the situation is not much different, why well because I must admit that we were never able to form a solid block, the 10 new countries which joined the Union last year was unable to speak with one voice so in fact during our negotiations we were sometimes played one against another and it was used by our negotiating partners as an advantage and in that sense you’ll be in a similar position, the fact that you are alone is not a weakness. Next point that I’d like to make is about the backyard of negotiations, which is often neglected. Negotiations are perceived as a diplomatic effort, sort of diplomatic exercise while in fact the core of negotiations it is inside the parliament and I must say that our lessons are in these terms are quite difficult because in the late 90’s we had significant slow-down in negotiations because of lack of understanding inside the parliament about the necessities to purseed with legal adjustments. Our MP’s were so much preoccupied with domestic politics that they opened sort of contest who is tougher against the EU or who is toughest in the talks with the EU and as you can imagine the bargaining power of the EU was not in favor of Poland of course. Another thing point about the role of media, I can see a lot of television stations here, cameras, newspapers in our case I think we also made sort of mistake, we didn’t pay sufficient attention to media, we didn’t explain sufficiently what the negotiations about and we were very often criticized by the media for something which was not our fault in fact for example as I mentioned we negotiated as a group despite that it was not a solid group but very frequently criticized Poland, Polish media of course, saying “look the Hungarians they have already closed 15 chapters of negotiations and you have only 12, why are weak, you cannot deliver, the Hungarians are better, the Checks are better they have closed 16 chapters so you are lazy guys and you have to make things better” while in fact it wasn’t necessarily so sometimes it is good to be consistent or persistent and this perception the number of chapters closed is a false perception. The same goes for the final accord of the negotiations, the media reported the completion of negotiations as giant triumph of Polish delegation while after two weeks the media realized that it wasn’t such a giant triumph and why we presented it in such a way? They started analyzing and this leads me to the conclusion that a lot should be done in order to explain properly what are the technicalities of negotiations. What is the substance and what are the expected outcomes, this is a work, which is necessary in order to have understanding on the side of media.

My last point is about the diverging interest which are revealed due to negotiations, I think that negotiations provoked a diversity of use inside the country and they reveal diverging interest among different social groups, professional groups and so on and to complete the negotiations it is necessary for political parties to be able to reconcile those diverging interests and to unite the society over a single goal which is the entry into the EU. So I want to repeat that the success does not lie in skillful diplomatic negotiations but the success lies in the hands of politicians of leaders and in the hands of political leads, which should be able to unify the society over the reaching of compromises between different, and always diverging needs and interests. Thank you.

Two super priorities and one additional comment. One super priority for me as hypothetical chief negotiator would be macroeconomic stability. Any country can be slow in structural reforms but the Union will never accept any candidate country, which would provide the risk of explosion in macroeconomic terms. So what is needed for you is to continue what you have been doing so far.

..peaceful settlement of orange revolution last year in Ukrain proves that we were providing stability to Europe. I know that you are in more difficult position but please think of it, you cannot ….pretext of being accused of providing instability. And the final point is what the Ambassador Kretschmer mentioned several times, I would also like to stress the implementation of European directives. We can think of, incorporating directive easily to the language of the law but what is much more important is and this will be assessed by the commission and by the member states to what extend this letter of the law is incorporated into practice, how it is enforced and how it is practically implemented and how it works in practice. I know it is difficult, it is like with the speed limit if the limit is 50 km per hours and if the police cannot detect drivers who are over speeding the law is not implemented and you’ll be accounted for implementation, you’ll be scrutinized from the point of to what extend you’ve implemented the law. So please pay attention to implementation.

Question (Uğur Yüce): Sayın Başkan çok teşekkür ediyorum. Benim panele sualim bilhassa Polonya ve İspanya’dan gelen misafirlerimize. Sayın Sungar’ın kısaca değindiği bir hususun biraz mümkünse açılmasını rica edeceğim. Türkiye’nin önündeki AB tam üyelik müzakerelerinde iç sorunlarından en önemlisi aslında merkezi sistemden AB’nin prensibi olan ekonomik uygulaması olan bölgesel kalkınmaya dönüş. Üç yıl önce Türkiye ............ bazında 26 alt bölgeye bölündü. Ama üç yıldır bölgesel kalkınma ajansları yasa tasarısını çıkartamadık. Haftaya Meclis’e inecek ama gücü paylaşmak istemeyen kurumların ortaya koydukları en önemli gerekçe Türkiye’nin bölünmez bütünlüğü ve hepimizin bildiği birtakım mazeretler. Bilhassa İspanya gibi Katalanya Bask sorunlarını da yaşayan bir ülke. Aslında bu bölgesel kalkınma modeliyle birlikte siyasi açıdan neler yaşadı? Bu konuda Polonya’nın 20 yıllık bir tecrübesi var. Acaba bizi bu konuda bir miktar rahatlatabilirler mi?

Bahadır Kaleağası: Your experience of centralization versus decentralization and regional policies and development.

In 1998 we made a reform to a great extend driven by the future accession to the EU and we reduced the number of provinces from 49 down to 16 giving also to them power in the form of competences tasks and also public finance so they are locally elected governments in all of 16 provinces and we have also lower peers of local communities this exists probably everywhere. It works, it is necessary indeed, may be it is not a must as my Spanish colleague says because there is a diversity of solutions but it works and it is helpful from the point of programming the EU special funds so you would be encouraged as well by the Commission.

Questions:

A few detail questions about the NGO’s and private sector involvement in the negotiations process. Yes indeed in our case NGO’s, private sector associations they were involved in the coarse of our negotiation positions, later on when the negotiations accelerated it was more difficult to maintain very intensive contacts with the NGO’s but in general they were involved. The other question whether any country was in the CU before accession? In our case I can confirm that we were in a free trade zone, which was established 1999-2000, we maintained separate external tariff policy until accession so free trade zone yes but not CU in our case. Next question, Turkey alone will be more scrutinized, more detail monitored then the others, that is true but as our Spanish colleague explained the member states in the commission looks thoroughly at big states so Poland, Turkey anyway would be very heavily scrutinized under any formula. What is the weakest point in Poland now after gaining membership I would say that our great weakness is unreformed public finance which prevents us from fast entry into Euro zone we have state aids to enterprises which is too big we have still health care subsidies which are too big, social allowances and benefits for handicapped people which is unjustified so simply if we reformed public finance earlier now we would have been in a better position. And final point which is most difficult for me is the question about confederation of EU states and my position, it is only because of lack of time that I didn’t say that I am in favor of Turkey joining the EU but I don’t think that confederation of states which is foreseeable at least during my life time so I don’t believe that Confederation is achievable in the course of next generation and what else I would say that Turkish entry or even Turkish negotiations with the EU gives us reason and justification for saying if Turkey yes, why not Ukrain? We would also be in favor of Ukrain joining the EU but of course then the EU would be entirely different from what it was 40 years ago and with Turkey and Ukrain of course the Confederation would be even more distant goal and may be not a goal for me, confederation is something I would hesitate to say that it is my goal.