EU urges re-elected Erdogan to boost reform tempo

The European Union saluted the landslide re-election of Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan's Islamist-rooted AK Party on Monday and urged him to press ahead fast with stalled reforms required for EU membership.
Victory for the pro-European conservative party which began Ankara's accession negotiations in 2005 was a boost for its European aspirations, but big hurdles remain with new French President Nicolas Sarkozy firmly opposed to Turkish entry.
"It is essential that the new government will relaunch legal and economic reforms with full determination and concrete results," EU Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn told reporters at a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brussels.
Rehn highlighted a need for greater freedom of expression and religion in the secular but mainly Muslim country, and said the EU could open negotiations in a number of new policy areas, known in EU parlance as "chapters", by the year-end.
"We need in particular to see concrete results in areas of fundamental freedoms such as freedom of expression and religious freedom," he said. French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said Paris had a political problem with five of the 35 chapters in the accession talks because they assumed the outcome of membership. But he said France, which prevented talks on economic and monetary policy last month, would not block the negotiating process on other policy areas.
Congratulating Erdogan on his victory, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said: "Prime Minister Erdogan has given his personal commitment to the sustained movement towards the European Union."
Joost Lagendijk, co-chairman of the EU-Turkey joint parliamentary assembly, said the result was good news for Turkey and Europe provided Erdogan now made up for two lost years by enacting key reforms on freedom of speech and religion.
EU officials said privately the Commission's next annual progress report on Turkey, due on November 7, would have to note a reform standstill unless the re-elected government acted fast.
Eurosceptic ultra-nationalists fared well in the poll, which analysts said would make it harder for the ruling pro-EU AK Party to quickly press ahead with controversial reforms. But the AK Party needs the EU help to keep at bay secular critics who accuse it of using the EU-inspired reforms on civil rights as a screen to boost the role of religion.