ENLARGEMENT Turkey
Turkey set to take another step in EU membership talks
By Toby Vogel - 10.12.2009 / 05:18 CET
Turkey warned over ban on access to ports, but Cyprus fails to freeze membership talks.
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© 2012 European Voice. All rights reserved.
TURKEY EU membership is still a long way off. REUTERS
Fact file
MAcedonia
EU foreign ministers delayed a decision on opening membership talks with Macedonia, a membership candidate since 2005.
In October, the European Commission said that Macedonia had met all preconditions for the talks, which remain blocked because Greece objects to the country's name, which it shares with a Greek province. Pierre Lellouche, France's minister for Europe, said on Monday (7 December) that France, out of solidarity, stood with Greece on the question of Macedonia's membership talks.
Nikola Gruevski, Macedonia's prime minister, told a conference in Brussels on Tuesday that Greece was “monopolising history” and that it wanted to “change our identity”. “This attitude of Greece is not European,” Gruevski said. At the same conference, Borut Pahor, prime minister of Slovenia, acknowledged that a “silent majority” of member states believed that there should be a temporary halt to further enlargement after Croatia and Iceland, which could enter in 2012.
Lukšic: we are meeting EU accession conditions; Commission to report on progress in mid-May.
Croatia's government has pledged to tackle its principal obstacle to European Union accession – the loss-making, state-owned shipyards.
But Serbian government will proceed with plans to let Serbs in north Kosovo vote for their local assemblies.
Goodbye krona, hello dollar?
Germany drops opposition to candidate staus being granted.
