08 July, 2017
Members of the European Parliament said Thursday that Turkey's European Union accession talks should be suspended if proposed changes to its constitution are implemented.
Hahn was speaking to reporters at the end of a visit to Turkey during which he met Prime Minister Binali Yildirim and other government ministers.
"We need to work together in the future and ensure that the report, which is submitted to votes, calls for the deepening of EU-Turkey relations in key areas of joint interest".
Relations between the two countries remain frosty with Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte telling BNR public radio on Thursday he was still "incredibly angry with Turkey because of the chaos it caused in Rotterdam".
In June, the EU Parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee called on the EU Commission to halt the talks on Turkey's accession to the bloc, stating that the constitutional reform package was "not in line with EU membership criteria". "This decision is of no value for us".
President Tayyip Erdogan is attending the G20 summit in Hamburg, where he will attend various sessions.
MEPs acknowledged the extraordinary difficulties faced by Turkey in 2016, including heavy flows of refugees from neighboring Syria and an attempted coup-d'etat last July, but criticized the measures undertaken in the state of emergency that has been in place since.
But Turkish officials have rejected the resolution.
"The current strategy of the European Commission and EU leaders seems to wait silently for things to improve in Turkey", said the European Parliament's lead negotiator on Turkey, Kati Piri, criticising a stance which she said was "feeding President Erdogan's authoritarianism".
"The backbone of the relationship between Turkey and the European Union are accession negotiations", Celik told reporters.
The parliamentarians urged Ankara to join the convention on Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA), "which obliges the parties to notify and consult each other on major projects that may have a significant adverse transboundary impact on the environment".
In December 2014, the Ministry of Environment and Urban Development of Turkey approved a report on environmental impact assessment of Akkuyu NPP project.
