EU Pre-Accession Funds to Turkey: Driven by an Accession Perspective or (Geo-)Politics?

EU pre-accession funds are considered an essential and necessary part of EU candidate countries’ reform trajectories. Turkey has benefitted from pre-accession funds since 2001, but the allocation of these funds has been increasingly questioned and politicized. The effective freeze of Turkey’s accession process -wherein no new chapters have been opened due to developments following the attempted coup in 2016- and repeated crises between the EU and Turkey have led to the partial suspension or freezing of some parts of pre-accession assistance. Yet, Turkey remains the largest beneficiary of pre-accession funds overall. This paper will look at how the allocation of EU’s pre-accession funds to Turkey have been framed and discussed by key EU actors in different time periods. The paper argues that EU aid to Turkey has become increasingly transactional rather than accession-oriented with the Commission, the lead actor in the accession process, relying increasingly on a geopolitical approach and the Council strategically delinking accession aid from other migration or security related funding. The European Parliament, which holds a less critical role during the accession process, has continually asked for the suspension of accession negotiations with (and hence also a suspension of all pre-accession funds), without offering a real alternative narrative.