| ANDREW VORKINK | Director for World Bank Turkey |
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The World Bank Is Looking Forward To Continuing The Dialogue And Cooperation With The Turkish Government |
On October 3rd 2005, Turkey began accession negotiations with the EU. That was a historical occasion for Turkey and the EU. This step has been an important signal for financial markets and will create a firm anchor for the country’s development in the years ahead. By all accounts the process since October has started well, with the initial screening of the 35 chapters for negotiations being handled in a very professional and smooth way.
The process of accession will provide a strong incentive for Turkey to continue its political, macroeconomic, and structural reforms. Already in the past months since the EU Council decided to start the negotiation process, important benefits have been felt in Turkey in terms of stability, investment and a strengthening of the economy and social conditions. The objective of the Bank in this process has been to help Turkey implement fundamental reforms to reduce economic vulnerability, achieve high and stable growth, and continue the process of addressing social and environmental problems. While the Bank’s previous Country Assistance Strategy focused on crisis management, the current Country Assistance Strategy focuses on reducing the risk of reemergence of crisis and assisting Turkey address the many challenges of preparing for EU membership. The negotiations will be complex and like other countries before it, will last over many years. I would like to take this opportunity to re-affirm the World Bank’s commitment to support Turkey during this important process of integration with Europe.
The Bank’s own assistance to Turkey during this accession period is multifaceted, similar to the Bank’s support to other EU Accession candidate countries and the majority of the countries that joined the Union in May 2004, with whom we have actively partnered in the enlargement process. In Turkey, not only are we involved in these peer to peer knowledge sharing exercises, but we provide analytical and advisory services in addition to our lending, covering subjects which are directly supporting the harmonization agenda and those, such as education and health which are only lightly covered by the Acquis Communautaire. The recently completed, in close collaboration with the Turkish authorities and the European Commission, first programmatic Country Economic Memorandum entitled “Promoting Sustained Growth and Convergence with the European Union” is an example of this type of Bank support on the overall agenda which we hope will make Turkey better prepared, and more attractive, for EU membership.
Turkey is beginning the process of accession with a remarkable record of macroeconomic stabilization and structural reform since the 2001 crisis, which has resulted in rapid growth, lower debt levels, and historically low inflation and interest rates. Turkey has consistently been one of the best performing economies among major emerging markets in recent years and I fully expect this performance record will continue. The Turkish economy of today looks very different and much healthier than it was five years ago. However, to ensure that the Turkey of five or ten years from now can function in a competitive world and in order to be ready for EU membership, this strong growth performance and further structural reforms will need to be continued during the entire accession period to achieve significant convergence with the EU.
To sustain this strong record of performance, Turkey faces the challenge of simultaneously managing the process of EU accession and fulfilling the requirements for membership under the Copenhagen criteria and under the Acquis and implementing a broader development agenda beyond the Acquis, in order to prioritize reforms with the greatest benefits for sustained and inclusive growth. Key preconditions I see, for ensuring continued robust growth include:
Continued macroeconomic stability supported by fiscal and external sustainability and Implementation of structural reforms that increase the competitiveness of the Turkish economy through improvements in total factor productivity, making the labor market more flexible, promotion of stronger employment growth, and improvements in efficiency and productivity growth in services as well as better educational attainment and worker skills.
Income convergence to the EU will not be spontaneous and requires a stable macroeconomic and political environment, well functioning legal, administrative and physical infrastructure, deeper economic integration into the EU single market, better mobilization of production factors, increased investment in physical and human capital, increasing FDI flows, and accelerated productivity growth.
In order to achieve the convergence objective, Turkey needs to take advantage of the EU accession process as an anchor for continuing reform, economic stability, and accelerated growth. The experience of EU cohesion countries suggests that the benefits of EU integration are contingent on the quality of the policy framework, efficient and effective public management, and maintaining the reform momentum. In this context, we must recognize that the reform agenda for accession, will need to be supported by a high level of coordination within the government. This then is the main purpose of this seminar - how to organize the administrative machinery to make the negotiation process go as quickly and smoothly as possible. Important areas which will be discussed include: Vertical and horizontal coordination among and within government agencies, Clear policies and defined competencies to avoid fragmentation and overlapping, Strong quality control of new regulations for correct implementation of the Acquis, Procedural efficiency and timely policy making, and Accurate impact assessments of policy actions.
Now that after more than forty years Turkey is beginning negotiations, there is an opportunity for it to learn about other countries’ coordination experiences during their own accession processes, particularly the experiences of Poland, Czech Republic and Hungary who have recently acceded, and of Romania, which is about to complete the process. These countries have one thing in common: they have been actively involved at the most senior levels in their home countries’ EU accession negotiations. Today we hope to extract as much from their cumulative experiences as possible, in as candid a manner as possible. The scope and content of their presentations and the ensuing discussions will be guided by their experience and assessment of what worked well and what worked less well during their negotiations
Finally, I would like to mention that in supporting this seminar, the Bank is not advocating that a particular administrative model should be adopted during EU negotiations. However, we support the recognition by Minister BABACAN that administrative structures are a key component in managing the negotiations effectively. The Bank expects to continue to support Turkey with additional Leadership and Knowledge Sharing seminars such as this one. We expect to collaborate closely with the Minister to prepare a seminar on Impact Assessments in the near future.
This knowledge-sharing seminar series is part of the programmatic engagement between the World Bank and Turkey in the context of the EU accession process. In this context, we will also embark on the preparation of the second report in the CEM programmatic series. Because of the broad-ranging reform agenda to be addressed, the complexity of implementation, and the span of the accession time frame, future work, to be conducted for this second CEM, is intended to cover additional subjects that will become prominent for EU accession over the medium run, such as public administration, agriculture and the environment. In closing, I take this opportunity to say that the World Bank is looking forward to continuing the dialogue and cooperation with the Turkish Government during this important period and hope this seminar helps promote a more effective EU accession negotiation process.