Greek FM: Open up EU path to Serbia

there is an alternative to EU.

we will see whether the EU-officials are smart enough to realize that Serbia within the EU is better for them than outside the EU.

and, to reach that goal, they shouldn´t believe that they can go on like they did in the past.

the Serbs are slowly changing their minds. not only Tadic feels that.

this greek FM is like homeless santa.make sure you pay the german bill first and after think about broken countries.

Oh please. Pay your debts and then talk. Thanks to Greece (and Bulgaria and Romania) everyone is now at least a decade out of EU.

"we will see whether the EU-officials are smart enough to realize that Serbia within the EU is better for them than outside the EU."

-- Better for who? Turkey is a force to be reckoned with and they leave Turkey out. What makes you think that Serbia which doesn't yeild 1/10 of Turkey's economic, politic and military power can force their hand. You guys think you're more than really are. Napoleonic syndrome, I guess.

johny

The only parts of Turkey which are European in terms of standards are Constantinople and a handful of coastal towns on the Mediterranean. The rest of the country is practically third world islamic standard, something that has nothing to do with Europe.

If it was indeed such a prosperous country, why are so many vast millions of Turks living in EU countries? No thanks, you as an Albanian do not have the right to discuss EU issues, since your country is not a part thereof and more than likely will not join in many years (if at all).

Turkey is in every way an alien to Europe, and the longer it is kept at bay, the better for Europe. Europe has given away enough tax money in welfare to immigrants and other useless things, when first and foremost, the interests of the citizens should be held in regard by the government.

Mr. Sudyka,

The reasons that Turkey has not joined the EU yet can be numerous but none of them is what you simply say out of the spite.

Turkey's GDP is a whooping 750b dollars (15 largest in the world) way too high compared to many EU countries and even to your Poland (535b). It's a solid ally to US and EU in the fight of terrorism and a very reliable economic partner. Turkey has a secular society and is a democratic republic where religion does not interferes with the state politics. I can't say the same for example Greece, where the church is part of the state and priests are government employees. Kind of ridiculous when you think that EU, including your Poland, has to pay for Greek government debt. Turkey has social and economic stability.
and percentage wise its emigrant population is much lower than your polish emigration to EU. There has never been a condition on what religion a country must exercise to join EU and EU it's an economic bloc not a religious organization.

The main reason why Turkey hasn't join EU is because of the Cyprus issue. It's true that geographically most of it lies in Asia but that has been a known fact even before candidate status was awarded so I don't think it is a blocking reason. On a personal note it's rather arrogant that you put doubts on Albania joining EU, while Poland, itself an ex-communist country, joined EU just a decade ago. Albania will have visa-liberalization at the end of the year. It has no border problems, has excellent relations with all its neighbors, it's a NATO member and a country with a constantly rising GDP. There are problems with corruption but improvement is visible. All signs are that Albania will make into EU even before Macedonia, Serbia and BH while each of these have more difficult problems to solve.

miri

Firstly, one must compare apples with apples. A country with over 70 million people is more than likely to have a larger economy than a country with less than 40 million people. It's just over half the population of Turkey, as a matter of fact.

Secondly, those statistics are somewhat outdated, or they are GDP nominal, as opposed to GDP PPP, which is the preferred indicator of puschasing power that the average citizen has, therefore looking at the size of the economy of a country is simply not good enough, because by this standard, India would then economically equal to any one of the large, developed European states, which is simply not the case.

Therefore, looking at IMF stats, here is a comparison between the two countries:

Turkey (2009)

GDP PPP - $1.040 trillion
Population - 72,561,312
Per capita - $12,476

Poland (2009)

GDP PPP - $688.761 billion
Population - 38,192,000
Per capita - $18,072

In fact, in terms of population, Turkey should rather be compared to someone like Italy:

Italy (2009)

GDP PPP - $1.740 trillion
Population - 60,418,711
Per capita - $29,109

This changes the perspective of what we are talking about, doesn't it? I am not saying Poland is wonderland and Turkey is Mordor, or anything like that, but the EU taking such a massive and comparitatively underdeveloped country into the EU in times like this, would simply be suicide. Turks from the poor regions of Anatolia would flood Western cities, undercut the local workers and create even more problems than the countries are facing now in the times of this crisis.

Anyway, the majority (vast majority) of Turkey's economy lies in Constantinople and the Western coastal cities. It's like Russia, where St Petersburg and Moscow are on the level, while the rest...

Oh, and as democratic as you claim this country is, they still refuse to acknowledge their genocide of 2 million Ottoman Christians (while Albanians and their supporters here squeal about Serbia killing 8,000 Bosniaks and 10,000 Albanians in Kosovo, or whatever the numbers are) in 1915, they have a law which is punishable with a jail sentence (Law 301, Insulting Turkishness) and finally, yes, Cyprus. I'm sorry, but invading a region of a soveriegn country and forging a fake, unrecognized state therin is in direct contravention of so many international levels, if it was a private court, they could have been sued to the moon and back. This is not a democratic state for me.

Also, comparing Polish and Turkish immigration to EU is also a non-issue, given that Turkey is not in the EU, while Poland is, therefore Poles can travel freely, while Turks cannot. Anyway, there are 3.5 million Turks in Germany, while France, UK and Netherlands have about 500 000 a piece, while in Austria, Switzerland and Belgium, they number in the hundreds of thousands. Poland does not even come close to this in terms of our immigrants into the West.

Oh, and I assure you, there are far more Turkish immigrants in Poland than there are Polish immigrants in Turkey.

Final point, I am not casting doubts on Albania joining the EU. I know they are stable economically, part of NATO etc. I most definitely did not have religion on my mind when I said what I said, I just meant that with the crisis in full force and Germany, UK and other big EU players having to bail out PIIGS and others, I don't see them letting Albania in for some time, and arrogance, as I am accused of, I consider better fitting to someone who is of an ethnicity not a member of the EU, telling EU countries what they should do about EU issues.

Apologies for the long post, I hope I didn't bore you. ;)

Mr. Sudyka,

"I don't see them letting Albania in for some time, and arrogance, as I am accused of, I consider better fitting to someone who is of an ethnicity not a member of the EU, telling EU countries what they should do about EU issues. "

Who is telling who to do what?!!

This is just a forum where everyone express his/her free opinion (relatively speaking). Just because your country is in EU and mine it's not does not give you more right to talk over such themes. I can guarantee you that you don't know more about EU than many of us whose mother countries are not member yet so take your snobish attitude and sell it to someone who can buy it.
I am afraid that you are under the impression that now that Poland is in EU, you yourself are a different person than before Poland entered EU. As far as I'm concerned you are what you write. This is a forum of equals and I don't expect you telling me what to talk and not talk about. Therein lies your arrogance then.

@jovan

Serbia is Europe's problem child. You seem to have bought into the politically correct phrase that is used when one refers to Serbia as a "key player" in the region.

make no mistake that it is Serbia that has it's hand out to the EU not the other way around. And no, there is no alternative for the EU.

The Greek FM's impotent comments not withstanding,
The EU is smart enough to know that they can try to solve the number one problem in balkans by conditioning Serbia along the way.

AdamNYC:

"Serbia is Europe's problem child."


@ AdamNYC:

No "Adam", as an EU citizen I have to say, "Kosova" is Europe´s problem child:

You are flooding the European markets with heroin and criminality !

Give me a break B92!
You took out Kosova from the last sentence of my comment.
What the hell are you trying to do? We don't have to write in here,it's voluntarily, and this is the lowest form of censorship.
Please grow up! Do you have any illusion that "Kosova is Serbia"?

"No thanks, you as an Albanian do not have the right to discuss EU issues, since your country is not a part thereof and more than likely will not join in many years (if at all). "

-- Peter, first I am of Albanian decent but I don't have Albanian citizenship. I am a US citizen. Just to clear things up a little. Second, I am not discussing issues. I am pointing a fact and emphasizing a world known fact. The fact is : "Turkey is much more powerful economically, militarily and political than Serbia yet the EU has chosen to keep them out". This is a fact. Third; who made you boss of the internet? Who gave you the authority to censor the topics about which people can talk about? I don't seem to have gotten the memo.

Johny:

"Better for who? Turkey is a force to be reckoned with and they leave Turkey out. What makes you think that Serbia which doesn't yeild 1/10 of Turkey's economic, politic and military power can force their hand."

dht:

The reason, why Turkey will not join the E.U., is that Turkey is an islamic country.

@Peter Sudyka

well, you seem to be viewing poland through rose colored glasses when trying to make a 1-1 comparison with turkey. you seem to gloss over the fact that poland is heavily dependent on Germany who represents a massive portion of its exports.. nearly a quarter. And in the last few years (unlike many eu states who shall remain nameless)Poland was smart enough to invest heavily in the public sector to keep itself from falling into recession. the growth it has seen has just offset the decline in the private sector wich did see a sharp decline. As it is, with those public investments winding down... what next for poland?
Thats not saying anything bad about poland, it just does not have a leadership role, its economy is integrated with and in turn dependent on the EU. its essentially in the same boat as other developed economies, scratching tooth and nail to maintain growth.

But Turkey, you took such pains to explain how turkey's economy lies in constantinople and the coastal cities... the rest you say is "third world"... In a effort to illustrate how Poland was "better" for the EU than turkey.

But that not quite true. if you are talking about the Economy, you inadvertently said it yourself, Turkish Economic Potential is miles above that of poland simply because of its lack of development. That it is Not an EU state, yet you are still able to split hairs and make comparisons to an EU state says alot.

Turkey wont see the expected explosion of growth of other developing economies like Brazil, india
But it DOES have the potential to Hit the GDP Top 10 in a matter of decades. easily leaving poland and many other eu states in the dust...and depending on its own politics and policies, it is no stretch to say that it can be the 3rd largest in Europe.

And this is Without the benefits of the EU.

I dont particularly Care if Turkey Joins the EU or not, but do you really think it would be in the EU's interest not to exploit that?

your reasoning with turkey & the EU has very little to do with economic reality.

Oh please. Pay your debts and then talk. Thanks to Greece (and Bulgaria and Romania) everyone is now at least a decade out of EU.

this greek FM is like homeless santa.make sure you pay the german bill first and after think about broken countries.

"we will see whether the EU-officials are smart enough to realize that Serbia within the EU is better for them than outside the EU."

-- Better for who? Turkey is a force to be reckoned with and they leave Turkey out. What makes you think that Serbia which doesn't yeild 1/10 of Turkey's economic, politic and military power can force their hand. You guys think you're more than really are. Napoleonic syndrome, I guess.

there is an alternative to EU.

we will see whether the EU-officials are smart enough to realize that Serbia within the EU is better for them than outside the EU.

and, to reach that goal, they shouldn´t believe that they can go on like they did in the past.

the Serbs are slowly changing their minds. not only Tadic feels that.

AdamNYC:

"Serbia is Europe's problem child."


@ AdamNYC:

No "Adam", as an EU citizen I have to say, "Kosova" is Europe´s problem child:

You are flooding the European markets with heroin and criminality !

@jovan

Serbia is Europe's problem child. You seem to have bought into the politically correct phrase that is used when one refers to Serbia as a "key player" in the region.

make no mistake that it is Serbia that has it's hand out to the EU not the other way around. And no, there is no alternative for the EU.

The Greek FM's impotent comments not withstanding,
The EU is smart enough to know that they can try to solve the number one problem in balkans by conditioning Serbia along the way.

Johny:

"Better for who? Turkey is a force to be reckoned with and they leave Turkey out. What makes you think that Serbia which doesn't yeild 1/10 of Turkey's economic, politic and military power can force their hand."

dht:

The reason, why Turkey will not join the E.U., is that Turkey is an islamic country.

johny

The only parts of Turkey which are European in terms of standards are Constantinople and a handful of coastal towns on the Mediterranean. The rest of the country is practically third world islamic standard, something that has nothing to do with Europe.

If it was indeed such a prosperous country, why are so many vast millions of Turks living in EU countries? No thanks, you as an Albanian do not have the right to discuss EU issues, since your country is not a part thereof and more than likely will not join in many years (if at all).

Turkey is in every way an alien to Europe, and the longer it is kept at bay, the better for Europe. Europe has given away enough tax money in welfare to immigrants and other useless things, when first and foremost, the interests of the citizens should be held in regard by the government.

Mr. Sudyka,

The reasons that Turkey has not joined the EU yet can be numerous but none of them is what you simply say out of the spite.

Turkey's GDP is a whooping 750b dollars (15 largest in the world) way too high compared to many EU countries and even to your Poland (535b). It's a solid ally to US and EU in the fight of terrorism and a very reliable economic partner. Turkey has a secular society and is a democratic republic where religion does not interferes with the state politics. I can't say the same for example Greece, where the church is part of the state and priests are government employees. Kind of ridiculous when you think that EU, including your Poland, has to pay for Greek government debt. Turkey has social and economic stability.
and percentage wise its emigrant population is much lower than your polish emigration to EU. There has never been a condition on what religion a country must exercise to join EU and EU it's an economic bloc not a religious organization.

The main reason why Turkey hasn't join EU is because of the Cyprus issue. It's true that geographically most of it lies in Asia but that has been a known fact even before candidate status was awarded so I don't think it is a blocking reason. On a personal note it's rather arrogant that you put doubts on Albania joining EU, while Poland, itself an ex-communist country, joined EU just a decade ago. Albania will have visa-liberalization at the end of the year. It has no border problems, has excellent relations with all its neighbors, it's a NATO member and a country with a constantly rising GDP. There are problems with corruption but improvement is visible. All signs are that Albania will make into EU even before Macedonia, Serbia and BH while each of these have more difficult problems to solve.

miri

Firstly, one must compare apples with apples. A country with over 70 million people is more than likely to have a larger economy than a country with less than 40 million people. It's just over half the population of Turkey, as a matter of fact.

Secondly, those statistics are somewhat outdated, or they are GDP nominal, as opposed to GDP PPP, which is the preferred indicator of puschasing power that the average citizen has, therefore looking at the size of the economy of a country is simply not good enough, because by this standard, India would then economically equal to any one of the large, developed European states, which is simply not the case.

Therefore, looking at IMF stats, here is a comparison between the two countries:

Turkey (2009)

GDP PPP - $1.040 trillion
Population - 72,561,312
Per capita - $12,476

Poland (2009)

GDP PPP - $688.761 billion
Population - 38,192,000
Per capita - $18,072

In fact, in terms of population, Turkey should rather be compared to someone like Italy:

Italy (2009)

GDP PPP - $1.740 trillion
Population - 60,418,711
Per capita - $29,109

This changes the perspective of what we are talking about, doesn't it? I am not saying Poland is wonderland and Turkey is Mordor, or anything like that, but the EU taking such a massive and comparitatively underdeveloped country into the EU in times like this, would simply be suicide. Turks from the poor regions of Anatolia would flood Western cities, undercut the local workers and create even more problems than the countries are facing now in the times of this crisis.

Anyway, the majority (vast majority) of Turkey's economy lies in Constantinople and the Western coastal cities. It's like Russia, where St Petersburg and Moscow are on the level, while the rest...

Oh, and as democratic as you claim this country is, they still refuse to acknowledge their genocide of 2 million Ottoman Christians (while Albanians and their supporters here squeal about Serbia killing 8,000 Bosniaks and 10,000 Albanians in Kosovo, or whatever the numbers are) in 1915, they have a law which is punishable with a jail sentence (Law 301, Insulting Turkishness) and finally, yes, Cyprus. I'm sorry, but invading a region of a soveriegn country and forging a fake, unrecognized state therin is in direct contravention of so many international levels, if it was a private court, they could have been sued to the moon and back. This is not a democratic state for me.

Also, comparing Polish and Turkish immigration to EU is also a non-issue, given that Turkey is not in the EU, while Poland is, therefore Poles can travel freely, while Turks cannot. Anyway, there are 3.5 million Turks in Germany, while France, UK and Netherlands have about 500 000 a piece, while in Austria, Switzerland and Belgium, they number in the hundreds of thousands. Poland does not even come close to this in terms of our immigrants into the West.

Oh, and I assure you, there are far more Turkish immigrants in Poland than there are Polish immigrants in Turkey.

Final point, I am not casting doubts on Albania joining the EU. I know they are stable economically, part of NATO etc. I most definitely did not have religion on my mind when I said what I said, I just meant that with the crisis in full force and Germany, UK and other big EU players having to bail out PIIGS and others, I don't see them letting Albania in for some time, and arrogance, as I am accused of, I consider better fitting to someone who is of an ethnicity not a member of the EU, telling EU countries what they should do about EU issues.

Apologies for the long post, I hope I didn't bore you. ;)

Mr. Sudyka,

"I don't see them letting Albania in for some time, and arrogance, as I am accused of, I consider better fitting to someone who is of an ethnicity not a member of the EU, telling EU countries what they should do about EU issues. "

Who is telling who to do what?!!

This is just a forum where everyone express his/her free opinion (relatively speaking). Just because your country is in EU and mine it's not does not give you more right to talk over such themes. I can guarantee you that you don't know more about EU than many of us whose mother countries are not member yet so take your snobish attitude and sell it to someone who can buy it.
I am afraid that you are under the impression that now that Poland is in EU, you yourself are a different person than before Poland entered EU. As far as I'm concerned you are what you write. This is a forum of equals and I don't expect you telling me what to talk and not talk about. Therein lies your arrogance then.

@Peter Sudyka

well, you seem to be viewing poland through rose colored glasses when trying to make a 1-1 comparison with turkey. you seem to gloss over the fact that poland is heavily dependent on Germany who represents a massive portion of its exports.. nearly a quarter. And in the last few years (unlike many eu states who shall remain nameless)Poland was smart enough to invest heavily in the public sector to keep itself from falling into recession. the growth it has seen has just offset the decline in the private sector wich did see a sharp decline. As it is, with those public investments winding down... what next for poland?
Thats not saying anything bad about poland, it just does not have a leadership role, its economy is integrated with and in turn dependent on the EU. its essentially in the same boat as other developed economies, scratching tooth and nail to maintain growth.

But Turkey, you took such pains to explain how turkey's economy lies in constantinople and the coastal cities... the rest you say is "third world"... In a effort to illustrate how Poland was "better" for the EU than turkey.

But that not quite true. if you are talking about the Economy, you inadvertently said it yourself, Turkish Economic Potential is miles above that of poland simply because of its lack of development. That it is Not an EU state, yet you are still able to split hairs and make comparisons to an EU state says alot.

Turkey wont see the expected explosion of growth of other developing economies like Brazil, india
But it DOES have the potential to Hit the GDP Top 10 in a matter of decades. easily leaving poland and many other eu states in the dust...and depending on its own politics and policies, it is no stretch to say that it can be the 3rd largest in Europe.

And this is Without the benefits of the EU.

I dont particularly Care if Turkey Joins the EU or not, but do you really think it would be in the EU's interest not to exploit that?

your reasoning with turkey & the EU has very little to do with economic reality.

Give me a break B92!
You took out Kosova from the last sentence of my comment.
What the hell are you trying to do? We don't have to write in here,it's voluntarily, and this is the lowest form of censorship.
Please grow up! Do you have any illusion that "Kosova is Serbia"?

"No thanks, you as an Albanian do not have the right to discuss EU issues, since your country is not a part thereof and more than likely will not join in many years (if at all). "

-- Peter, first I am of Albanian decent but I don't have Albanian citizenship. I am a US citizen. Just to clear things up a little. Second, I am not discussing issues. I am pointing a fact and emphasizing a world known fact. The fact is : "Turkey is much more powerful economically, militarily and political than Serbia yet the EU has chosen to keep them out". This is a fact. Third; who made you boss of the internet? Who gave you the authority to censor the topics about which people can talk about? I don't seem to have gotten the memo.