Journal on Ethnopolitics and Minority Issues in Europe (Jun 2002)
Why the EU Can Nonetheless Be Good for Cyprus
Abstract
Membership negotiations between the Republic of Cyprus and the European Union (EU) have so far had at best a rather ambiguous effect on the Cyprus conflict. While there was a last-minute push to enter face-to-face negotiations, the initial official Turkish and Turkish-Cypriot reaction was moving away from, and not towards a solution, and it is not clear at the time of writing whether a solution can be found within the scope of the current talks. Therefore, the 'cataclysmic effect' that the membership negotiations were initially proposed to have failed to materialize, which was due to a number of misguided assumptions about the conflict and the role of the EU therein. Nonetheless, this paper argues that the EU can have a positive role to play in the process towards a lasting and peaceful solution in Cyprus if both sides join the EU. This positive role is due to the postmodern features of the EU as an institutional and discursive framework that would allow actors to reconceptualize their identities and relations between each other. Although this framework does not automatically and in itself bring about change, the history of European integration illustrates the potentially subversive character of integration that makes the EU a particularly good framework within which the Cyprus conflict can be settled.
