THE STATE OF THE EUROPEAN UNION Towards a new legislative term

THE STATE OF THE EUROPEAN UNION 28 On the other hand, the fact that unanimity is cur- rently required to adopt determined decisions, such as in Common Foreign and Security Policy, gives each Member State extraordinary power to veto the will of the rest, thereby prejudicing the majority. As membership grows, so does the chance that unanimity will cause problems. In Strasbourg on 9 th May, Europe Day, the German Chan- cellor Olaf Scholz called for institutional reforms before the EU accepts new countries, which would imply aban- doning unanimity in favour of majority voting. This is a good solution to prepare the incorpora- tion - that cannot be denied according to the TEU - to any European State that meets the conditions, which could paralyse the EU with the current system, due to the eventual difficulty of coming to an agreement. Furthermore, problems with some current members, as mentioned above, have demonstrated that the EU must be more rigorous and stricter when approving new members, because if they are not ready, this might drag the whole group down and create difficulties within the common project. There are currently eight European States with can- didate status wishing to join the Union. In order of their application time, these are: Türkiye, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, Albania, Ukraine, Moldova and Bosnia-Herzegovina. Furthermore, Georgia is a poten- tial candidate as it must still meet several conditions, and Kosovo has also requested candidacy, although this does not seem feasible. by the time being Negotiations with each candidate State are in differ- ent phases and run at different rates, according to each country’s characteristics and possibilities. In some cases, they have even come to a halt, as we will see later. The problems that some candidates have, either at home, or with their neighbours, might be insurmountable obsta- cles to their membership if left unresolved. Below, we will analyse each one’s current incorporation perspec- tives, case by case. Türkiye Türkiye is far and away the longest-standing candidate. It asked to join the European Economic Community in 1987, although it signed an association agreement with the EEC back in 1963. It was awarded candidate status in 1999, in other words 24 years ago. Countries that began their negotiations the same year, even without officially being candidates, such as Slovenia or that were part of the Soviet Union when Türkiye requested mem- bership, such as Lithuania, became Member States in 2004, while Ankara continued to wait its turn. Membership negotiations with Türkiye did not begin until 2005, six years after it was accepted as a candidate and they were always weighed down by the reluctance of some European countries, some of which – Austria repeatedly and France occasionally for example – have asked for the application to be thrown out. In 2016, only 16 out of the 35 negotiating chapters had been opened and only one had been closed. That same year, the refugee agreement between the EU and Türkiye gave the accession negotiation a fresh push, although short- lived. The tough repression that followed the attempted coup in 2016 led to the first proposal to paralyse the negotiations in the European Parliament. The Turkish constitutional referendum in 2017, which led to a presi- dential system with wide-ranging powers, was consid- ered in Brussels to be a cause of ineligibility as it did not fit the Copenhagen criteria. Finally, in June 2018, the EU General Affairs Council resolved that conditions were not right to continue negotiations, given the grow- ing lack of democracy in the candidate country, and so negotiations have been suspended ever since with no planned date to revisit them. Türkiye’s candidacy has faced and continues to face many different problematic issues. Perhaps the most persistent issue has been its internal political situation which means it cannot meet the political aspects of the Copenhagen criteria. Military supervision over the gov- ernment, lurking in the shadows, was unacceptable for the EU for many years, although the Armed Forces have been completely controlled by civil power since 2010, at least in theory. There have also been periods of political instability, sentences from the European Court of Hu- man Rights due to repression of Kurd separatists and frequent economic recessions. This has made Türkiye’s path to fully joining the EU extremely difficult. Even so, the most important obstacle to Türkiye’s accession is Cyprus. In the 1960s, shortly after its in- dependence, there was growing conflict between the