BRUSSELS
Helene Flautre, Co-chair of Turkey-EU Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC), has said that the EU-Turkey JPC had not been cancelled.
Upon news claiming that the meeting was cancelled as EU term president Greek Cypriot administration wanted to attend the meeting too, Flautre released a statement on Wednesday, denying the claims.
Both Turkish and European parliaments very much agree to hold the meeting and also to give new momentum to our interparliamentary relations, she said.
Flautre noted, "it has been brought to my attention that the Turkish press has reported yesterday that the forthcoming 70th EU-Turkey Joint Parliamentary Committee meeting, scheduled to take place in the second semester 2012 in Turkey, would be cancelled. This is a factually incorrect information."
She said, "in my recent letter to co-chair Afif Demirkiran, chair of the Turkish parliamentary delegation to the JPC, I have, firstly, proposed a JPC Bureau meeting to take place on 19 October in Turkey, as usual practise before a regular JPC meeting; and secondly, I have suggested that the 70th JPC meeting could be held between December 19 and 21, 2012 in Turkey, instead of the originally scheduled meeting end-October and beginning-November, which will be almost impossible to stick to from a practical point of view."
"I would like to emphasise that the third JPC meeting this year would be a great opportunity to mark the 7th anniversary of the start of accession negotiations as well as 70th meeting of the JPC since its establishment in 1965. Moreover, the holding of this meeting is of great importance to highlight our long lasting and constructive interparliamentary relations, before the end of this year," she said.
We have many things to discuss and both parliaments wish to have a positive input into the accession process of Turkey to the European Union, she added.
