Dear all,
I would like to comment on Michael Guggenheim’s proposal that is as he put:
“Since Israel is considered to belong to "europe" and is allowed to
participate in EU-funded programs, why not instead of boycotting
Israel stop "boycotting" Israels neighbours? The idea would be to ask
for participation of palestinian, egyptian, lebanese or turkish
participation in these programs.” Sun, 26 Oct 2003
It seems some of the members of this list like JP ROOS found it as a good,
reasonable and fairer solution. But I have some doubts about the workability
of this proposal.
The first point is that Turkey as a candidate country for the full EU
membership has been already taking part in the EU- funded programs from the
January 2003 and will became a full participant from the beginning of 2004.
Second point I would like to make is, as a Turkish academic who has also been
following this process, I found the process of Turkish participation
extremely slow. Turkey first signed the EEC-Turkish association agreement
forty years ago in 1963, this agreement ratified Ankara Agreement in 1980.
Then Turkish participation in the EU-funded programs allowed 23 years later,
in 2003. The slowness of this process is rather discouraging.
The third point is that, this kind of programs require years of preparations,
organisation and negotiations. It means even the Israel’s Arab neighbours
accepted to take part it will take years to come. Also every participant
country has to contribute huge sums of money. I doubt any of these countries
like Palestine can afford this financial burden. In other words the financial
side is costly. As far as I remember Israel first joined EU-programs during
the 4th Frame Program (FP4) but later had to withdrew because they were not
ready organisationally and otherwise to full participate.
Finally, if Guggenheim’s proposal works it would be a reasonable and fairer
way forward: it wont punish Israeli colugos as well as will provide
Palestinian, Egyptian or Lebanese academics greater opportunity to take part
in EU-funden programs, however it seems to me this proposal wont be working
for the reasons I expressed above. So we might need to consider some other
alternatives.
Best Regards
Kayhan Delibas
Bu Elektronik Posta Adnan Menderes
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