EU agreed to open talks with Turkey on the environment chapter

PanARMENIAN.Net - European Union officials have agreed to give the go-ahead for the opening next week of talks with EU-candidate Turkey on the environment chapter of its accession negotiations, a small step forward in Ankara's troubled membership process.



The permanent representatives of the EU member countries agreed late on Thursday to open talks on the environment chapter on Monday during a Turkish-EU intergovernmental conference. This brings the number of chapters opened for accession talks to 12 out of 35.



The negotiations for Turkey's EU membership began in 2005.



The environment chapter is one of the hardest chapters out of the 35 due to its extensive scope and high standards for compliance. The accession process is expected to further slow down in the coming years given the fact that only a few chapters are left for negotiations, all of which have difficult opening benchmarks, Today's Zaman reported.