Spanish EU presidency to push for Turkey's membership (1st Lead)

Jan 8, 2010, 11:58 GMT

Madrid/Brussels - The Spanish European Union presidency will seek to give a new push to Turkey's membership negotiations with the union, Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos said Friday.

Spain was hoping to open four new chapters in addition to the 11 ones that are under negotiation, Moratinos told journalists in Madrid.

'We have four chapters in mind and we hope we can open them during our presidency,' said Moratinos, whose country holds the rotating EU presidency until June 30.

The negotiations about Turkey's joining the EU comprise a total of 35 chapters, one of which has been agreed on, and eight are blocked over Turkey's refusal to open its borders to traffic from EU member Cyprus.

Moratinos expressed confidence that 'positive results' could soon be reached in attempts to solve the conflict over the divided island.

'We are very, very interested in ending this conflict,' the minister said.

Technically, the EU regards all of Cyprus as its member state, though EU law does not apply in the area under Turkish control.

Moratinos also called for a greater 'political preparation' by the EU in upcoming climate talks in Germany and Mexico following the 'unsatisfactory' Copenhagen climate conference.

'We need to prepare such negotiations politically and not only technically,' Moratinos said.

Spain has otherwise set out a low-key programme focused on EU re-organization and economic recovery Friday as it formalized its plan for its six-month presidency of the bloc.

The presentation of the programme, which had been widely foreshadowed by official pronouncements, came a day after Spanish premier Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero controversially suggested that EU member states which fail to invest enough into research and economic growth over the next decade should be penalized.

'It is absolutely necessary for the 2020 economic strategy... to take on a new nature, a binding nature,' Zapatero said Thursday.

According to the EU's Lisbon Treaty, which came into force on December 1, Spain is set to chair and prepare most EU ministerial meetings over the next six months, with its chief challenge being to make sure that Lisbon is properly applied.

'The Spanish presidency's main responsibility will be to guarantee full enforcement of the Treaty of Lisbon,' the programme says.

Madrid will also be in charge of the debate on the EU's next 10-year economic strategy, following the failure of the 'Lisbon Strategy', which was launched in 2000 and aimed at making the EU the world's most competitive knowledge-based economy by 2010.

'We aim at boosting the coordination of domestic economic policies ... which should now be strengthened ahead of the new EU 2020 Growth and Employment Strategy,' the programme says.

Observers say that one reason for the Lisbon strategy's failure was that it did not set penalties for countries which missed their targets for investment in areas such as innovation - a defect Zapatero's comments seem designed to address.

The proposal is likely to spark heated debate among member states, who are reluctant to accept more EU oversight of their spending.

However, it is not Zapatero who is set to chair the EU's summits, but Herman Van Rompuy, the bloc's newly-elected full-time president, whose post was created by the Lisbon treaty.

Van Rompuy has already called for an extra EU summit on February 11 to discuss the 2020 economic plan and climate change. A regular summit set for late March is expected to finalize the strategy.

The presidency programme also calls for further EU efforts on financial regulation, a more coordinated foreign and defence policy, better ties with the United States, Latin America, North Africa, India, Japan and China, and a more coherent justice system.