Cypriot member of the European Parliament Loucas Fourlas on Wednesday offered terse words for European Enlargement Commissioner Marta Kos, after she characterised Turkey as a “strategic partner” of the European Union as she presented the commission’s latest annual report on the country’s progress towards accession to the European Union.

“If a country were occupying part of Slovenia, would you speak of a strategic partner? Would you characterise that as a strategic partnership, as you all do in the case of Turkey?” he asked during the day’s foreign affairs committee (Afet) session, with Slovenia, the example chosen, Kos’ home country.

He added, “if a country which occupies European territory, threatens a member state, Greece, with war, and blocks the energy interconnection between Cyprus and the European Union, how far are we prepared to go in making concessions to satisfy this ‘strategic partner’?”.

“Are we prepared to discuss visa issues or a customs union with this strategic partner, Turkey? I repeat, these points speak for themselves. This country, which you speak of and label a strategic partner, is, colleagues, occupying European territory,” he said.

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He then closed his intervention by asking, “I wonder, if your own country were under invasion, if a foreign nation were occupying a portion of Croatia, Germany, or Slovenia, would you still speak of a strategic partner?”.

In response, Kos said that “I agree with you that there is no other country”, and stressed that “that is why we are not going on in the accession process with Turkey”, with negotiations having been frozen since 2018.

“On the other hand, last year [there was] only €210 billion in trade of goods … between Europe and Turkey,” she said.

Kos: Some EU countries have ‘clear interest’ in updating Turkey customs deal

She said that because of this, “there is a clear interest from some of the European countries [which] want to update the customs union”, with the Turkish government also having been requesting that the agreement, which first entered into force in 1996, be upgraded.

Additionally, she said that “there is also our own clear interest” in this, and that “what is in our interest is that Turkey is a strategic partner, especially being the second-strongest member of Nato”, with Turkey’s defence industry having been increasingly involved in the supply of weapons to European countries since the Russian invasion of in Ukraine in 2022.

Returning to the matter of Cyprus, she told Fourlas that “as you have seen, we have really put down the concerns of your country in the enlargement report and we expect Turkey to follow international law and the agreements”.

Earlier in the session, she had lamented what she described as a “widening gap between the stated goal” of Turkey joining the European Union and “continuing backsliding” in terms of its democracy.

“The EU has a strategic interest in relations which reflect new realities,” she said.