Güven Sak

Turkey and EU have lost their vision of a common future with the stalling of the EU-Turkey accession process after 2007. The “positive agenda” items, most recently created around cooperation on Syrian migrants, were too shallow to get us back on track.

Customs Union Modernization in the age of the Green Deal, however, is deep enough to once again think about a common future for the EU and Turkey. We need a deeper, well designed, positive agenda.

Think about the depth of digitalization, biologization, decarbonization and common security issues at hand. There is a lot to talk about on the technical level between the Commission and the Turkish teams.

It may be tempting for the EU to abandon the CU all together and simply sign a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with Turkey. That would be a mistake.

It would not be able to handle the increasing complexity the Green Deal requires. Why Green Deal important?

The decarbonization of Turkey is the decarbonization of Europe.

Customs Union Modernization has gained a totally new dimension with the decarbonization agenda.

You may read note from here.