Greek-Turkish Dilemmas and the Cyprus-EU Accession Process

This article compares the processes of foreign policymaking in Greece and Turkey in order to examine why the incentives and pressures of the enlargement process have failed until now to initiate a settlement in the Cyprus bicommunal negotiations. While most studies on the Cyprus problem have focused on the two communities of the island, little at-tention has been paid to the policies of the two â??motherlandsâ??, namely Greece and Turkey. Yet their leverage on the two Cypriot communities and their conflicting expectations with regard to an enlarged Europe in the Eastern Mediterranean constitute a complex security puzzle. The Republic of Cyprus stands as a champion candidate member for the next enlargement, amid fears of Turkish reprisals and hopes for a po-litical settlement on the island. With the benefits of settlement overwhelming the benefits of any other alternative, it is paradoxical that the parties seem to be about to fail to reach a last-minute, mutually beneficial compromise. I try to resolve this paradox by supplementing rational choice theory with cognitivist theories of international relations. While rational choice predicts a direct relationship between external environment and foreign policy shifts, the case of Cyprus suggests that this relationship is actually indirect. Without understanding how the external environment is framed in the domestic political discourse of Greece and Turkey, it is impossible to demonstrate how outside pressure and incentives affect foreign policy shifts.

From Negotiations to Accession: Lessons from the 2007 Enlargement

Although overshadowed by the ‘big bang’ enlargement of 2004, the accession of Bulgaria and Romania to the EU in 2007 was more than simply a ‘coda’ enlargement. It had its own distinctive features and provides important insights into how the EU’s handling of enlargement is evolving. It established a number of interesting and potentially significant precedents and provided timely reminders of how important political and public opinion can be for ratification. Examination of the period from negotiating the terms of membership to the actual accession of the two applicants underlines the dynamic and increasingly uncertain nature of the EU enlargement process.

Which is the Only Game in Town? Minority Rights Issues in Estonia and Slovakia During and after EU Accession:Perspectives on European Politics and Society

Post-communist transition went hand in hand with the European integration process. Much of the literature on EU accession focuses on the rational decision to implement a set of European norms into domestic legislation pre-accession. It is often concluded that once EU membership is achieved, states succumb their rationality and act on the basis of internalised norms. The paper claims that the past literature overlooks the wider framework within which policy-makers operate before and after the accession, namely domestic sovereignty over policy-making and implementation. Tracing the policy dynamics in the area of minority rights in Estonia and Slovakia, we demonstrate that the European integration ushered greater domestic control over policy implementation on minority issues in two states exposed to a heavy dose of conditionality. As we observe, both states have consolidated their state- and nation-building policies referencing EU conditionality in the course of accession and later EU membership to assert centrality of domestic objectives for policy-making and implementation.

Rough Waters, Dark Shadows and Cross-Cutting Winds:the impact of European Union enlargement on Turkey’s EU accession negotiations

For a multiplicity of socio-economic, geo-political, strategic and identity-based reasons, Turkey’s progress towards EU membership is often treated as a sui generis case. Yet although Turkey’s accession negotiations with the European Union (EU) are essentially a bilateral – and often stormy – affair, they take place within a wider and dynamic process of enlargement in which not only can the gloomy – sometimes dark – shadows of past and prospective enlargements be clearly detected, but so too can the often chill winds from ongoing, parallel negotiations with other candidates. How the EU negotiates accession and what it expects from candidates has continued to evolve since the EU began drawing up its framework for negotiations with Turkey ten years ago. This paper charts this evolution by first identifying changes in the light of Croatia’s negotiating experience, the ‘lessons learnt’ by the EU in meeting the challenges of Bulgarian and Romanian accession, the EU’s handling of Iceland’s membership bid and accession negotiations, and the revised approach to negotiating accession evident in the more recent frameworks for accession negotiations with Montenegro and Serbia. The paper then explores the extent to which these changes have impacted on the approach the EU has adopted in framing and progressing accession negotiations with Turkey. In doing so, it questions both the consistency with which the EU’s negotiates accession and the extent to which Turkey’s progress towards EU membership is conditioned by the broader dynamics of EU enlargement as opposed to simply the dynamics within EU-Turkey relations and domestic Turkish reform efforts.

Exporting Europeanisation to the Wider Europe: the Twinning Excercise and Administrative Reform in the Candidate Countries and Beyond

This article looks at the EU's efforts to assist administrative reform in Eastern Europe, with particular attention to the twinning exercise, conceptually linked to Europeanization. The article argues that much of the debate on Europeanization has focused predominantly on the way in which existing member states are being transformed as a result of their participation in EU structures. Yet the political importance attached to EU membership by the accession applicants, as well as EU's determination to ensure compliance with the acquis communautaire prior to entry, indicates that Europeanization is not only confined to existing EU member states, but can be exported outside the geographical borders of the EU. Against this background the article argues that extending the scope of the Europeanization thesis beyond existing members can not only help us understand better the process of transformation in Eastern Europe and the ongoing accession negotiations, but can also contribute towards the refinement of the term's rather blurred conceptual content.

Molecular characterization of Nosema bombi (Microsporidia : Nosematidae) and a note on its sites of infection in Bombus terrestris (Hymenoptera : Apoidea)

Investigations of queen, worker and male bumble bees (Bombus terrestris) showed that all individuals became infected with Nosema bombi. Infections were found in Malpighian tubules, thorax muscles, fat body tissue and nerve tissue, including the brain. Ultrastructural studies revealed thin walled emptied spores in host cell cytoplasm interpreted as autoinfective spores, besides normal spores (environmental spores) intended for parasite transmission between hosts. The nucleotide sequence of the gene coding for the small subunit rRNA (SSU-rRNA) from Microsporidia isolated from B. terrestris, B. lucorum, and B. hortorum were identical, providing evidence that N. bombi infects multiple hosts. The sequence presented here (GenBank Accession no AY008373) is different from an earlier submission to GenBank (Accession no U26158) of a partial sequence of the same gene based on material collected from B. terrestris. It still remains to be investigated if there is species diversity among Microsporidia found in bumble bees.

Enlargement and the European Union’s Absorption Capacity: ‘oft-forgotten’ condition or additional obstacle to membership?

The Austrian government may have failed in its efforts in 2005 to have ‘privileged partnership' inserted into the European Union's framework for accession negotiations with Turkey, but this did not prevent the country's Chancellor, Wolfgang Schussel, from claiming that ‘for the first time ever, we have set an extra condition which will yet be very important in the future for Europe, namely the ability of the Union to take in new members'. Indeed, since its inclusion in the framework for negotiations, the EU's ‘capacity to absorb' new members is referred to as a new criterion for further enlargement of the European Union (EU). When opponents of Turkey 's membership, like Schussel, celebrate the emphasis on the EU's ‘absorption capacity', Turks generally regard it as specially-designed extra obstacle to their membership aspirations even if the EU's ‘absorption capacity' is a permanent agenda item whenever the EU discusses enlargement. This article explores the origins of this – supposedly new – condition and argues that the increased emphasis on the EU's ‘absorption capacity' can be explained by the shifts in the dynamics of EU enlargement.

And We’d Like to Thank…::Romania’s Integration into the European Union, 1989-2007

Conditionality is formally a key determinant of many non-member states’ relations with the EU. It is particularly so for states intent on membership. As the case of Romania shows, the EU’s use of conditionality is far from consistent. Relations can develop and accession take place without the requisite conditions being met. This follows from the use the EU makes of the flexibility evident in its evolving and generally vague definitions of the conditions that need to be met. Hence it was often extraneous factors over which Romania had either limited or no influence that were responsible for key developments in relations. These factors include the geopolitical and strategic interests of the EU and its member states, the actions of the Commission and the agenda-setting and constraining effects of rhetorical commitments and timetables, and the dynamics of the EU’s evolving approach to eastern enlargement.

Introduction

The scholarly interest in norm implementation in the area of minority rights protection emerged during the period of the European accession of post-communist societies, which were characterised by persistent cleavage along ethnic lines. These studies have analysed democratic transition of ethnically segmented societies and developed into a broad field that focuses its attention on inter-ethnic relations, the role of history, interstate cooperation and the impact of international organisations on post-communist states' treatment of domestic minorities. All these are usually conducted from a vantage point of the European conditionality research. In our introduction to the special issue we sketch a number of reasons why it is encouraging and indeed, desirable to move beyond the perusal of conditionality into the domain of implementation research.

Vasorelaxin: A Novel Arterial Smooth Muscle-Relaxing Eicosapeptide from the Skin Secretion of the Chinese Piebald Odorous Frog (Odorrana schmackeri)

The defensive skin secretions of amphibians are a rich resource for the discovery of novel, bioactive peptides. Here we report the identification of a novel vascular smooth muscle-relaxing peptide, named vasorelaxin, from the skin secretion of the Chinese piebald odorous frog, Odorrana schmackeri. Vasorelaxin consists of 20 amino acid residues, SRVVKCSGFRPGSPDSREFC, with a disulfide-bridge between Cys-6 and Cys-20. The structure of its biosynthetic precursor was deduced from cloned skin cDNA and consists of 67 amino acid residues encoding a single copy of vasorelaxin (vasorelaxin, accession number: HE860494). Synthetic vasorelaxin caused a profound relaxation of rat arterial smooth muscle with an EC50 of 6.76 nM.