Turkey and the Eu

Background:

The European Union is an economic and political federation consisting of 28 member countries that make common policy in several areas, nowadays it is one of the most important international organizations that exist.

 It was created in 1993 with the signing of the Treaty on European Union, commonly referred to as the Maastricht Treaty in order to unify Europe but it was preceded by various European organizations.

The first one was the European Coal and Steel Community, founded in 1950 to unite European countries economically and politically in order to secure lasting peace after the World War II. This European organization was formed by six countries: Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg and the Netherlands.

A few years after, in 1957, the Treaty of Rome creates the European Economic Community (EEC), this one was supposed to create a «common market» in Europe and started a  period of economic growth.

 In 1973 Denmark, Ireland and the United Kingdom joined the European Union, and after them more and more countries started to become part of it. The 1990s is also the decade of two treaties: the ‘Maastricht’ Treaty on European Union in 1993 and the Treaty of Amsterdam in 1999. They created also the «Schengen Space» , which allowed all the European citizens to  travel easily between all the member countries (without the passport for example), this agreement was also signed by other coutries that are not part of the European Union such as Norway.

In 2004 ten new countries from the east part of Europe  joined the EU, followed by Bulgaria and Romania in 2007. Croatia becomes the 28th member of the EU in 2013.

Turkey was one of the first countries, in 1959, to seek close cooperation with the young European Economic Community (EEC). In ordor to allow Turkey to trade goods and agricultural products with EEC countries without restrictions, they signed in 1963 the Ankara Agreement.

In 1987, Turkey submitted a formal request for full membership, which was rejected by the European Commission in 1989 on the grounds that Turkey manifested grave democratic deficiencies, they key thing about that event was that, unlike Morocco, they were eligible for full EU membership.At the Helsinki Summit in 1999, the European Council gives Turkey the status of candidate country for EU membership.