EU Hopeful Turkey Eyes Big Bill for Environment
Date: 29-Dec-04
Country: TURKEY
EU leaders have agreed to open entry talks with Turkey on Oct. 3, 2005, but the large, relatively poor, country is not expected to join for about a decade, partly because of the scale of its economic problems.
"The most optimistic but not very realistic projections speak of a need for investment of 20 billion euros. But this figure could rise to 60 billion euros," a Turkish official told a news briefing, on condition of anonymity.
The environment is one of 31 policy areas where Turkey would have to align its laws and standards with those of the EU. It has also proved one of the most problematic areas for the eight ex-communist countries which joined the wealthy bloc in May.
In its annual report on Turkey, the European Commission said recently Turkey still had much work to do to improve air and water quality, the treatment of waste and nature conservation.
Turkish officials said Ankara would qualify for increased EU funds to help overhaul its economy and public administration, but said the increases were likely to be phased in gradually.
"We are not expecting a big leap (in aid) for the next budgetary period 2007-2013," said a second official.
Turkey received around 250 million euros in 2004 in so-called pre-accession aid. That figure is expected to double by 2006, but is still small compared to the scale of aid received by other EU candidate countries.
Poland, which has a population of 40 million people and joined the EU in May, will have received 15.3 billion euros for the period from 2000 to 2006.
Romania, with 22 million people and set to join the EU in 2007, will have received 5.1 billion euros.
Turkey, which has 70 million people, is forecast to receive a total 1.7 billion euros for the same period. EU leaders agreed it would not become a full member of the bloc at least until after the end of the 2007-13 budgetary period.
