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Turkey Won’t Be Ready for EU Membership Even After Ten Years, Says European Commission President Juncker

Jean-Claude JunckerOn the eve of a critical summit between EU and Turkey, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said he cannot see Turkey becoming a member of the European Union even ten years from now. Mr. Juncker made the comments during an interview to the German financial newspaper Handelsblatt.
“Turkey is currently not ready for accession,” said the President of the European Commission. “And I think that won’t be the case in 10 years either,” he added.
Nevertheless, Mr. Juncker said he was “cautiously optimistic,” about the outcome of the EU summit with Turkey.
“In the coming days, we will conclude a binding agreement with Turkey, which we had already prepared during the last summit,” he said, referring to a deal EU heads of state agreed on earlier this month during a summit in Brussels.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel has placed all hopes on the EU-Turkey summit for a solution to the present refugee crisis.
Addressing the German parliament on Wednesday, she said that the crisis could only be solved if all European leaders were prepared to find a common solution. “We need a Europe in which all shared problems are handled together,” she said.
The German Chancellor feels there is no legal obstacle to the pursuit and materialization of a deal with Turkey over migrants.
According to the deal, details of which are expected to materialize by the end of the two-day summit are now under way, the European Union would deport all illegal migrants coming to Europe from Turkey back to the country to discourage illegal migration and at the same time accept contingents of legal asylum seekers.
Mr. Juncker defended the plan against critics who claim that sending back refugees violates the Geneva Convention on Refugees.
“Every illegal migrant will go through an individual asylum process, which will take roughly one week, and will always have to have a right to appeal,” he said. “Only afterwards can [a migrant] be sent back to Turkey.”
As for those who are concerned that EU is about to make a major concession to Turkey over Ankara’s demands for a free visa regime, European Commission Vice President Frans Timmermans sought to put to rest such concerns by saying ahead of the summit that Turkey would be offered no shortcuts to visa liberalization or EU memberships talks.
“We are certainly not giving Turkey a free ride,” he said.
(Source: Handelsblatt)

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