| | | | Such moves could block Turkey’s accession to the EU, Netherlands Foreign Minister Ben Bot said Sunday, only two days after EU leaders agreed to set a date, October 3 2005, to open membership talks with Ankara.
“I do not think it’s very fair to move the goal posts in the middle of a match,” Bot said on Dutch television. “We have never said to the Turks, neither in 1999 nor in 2002, that a referendum would lie at the end of the process. We have to be fair.”
Bot, whose country currently holds the rotating presidency of the EU, has been a constant supporter of Turkey’s accession bid, and helped broker the agreement signed by the bloc’s leaders at their Brussels summit last week.
| |
