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Can people really still point at Turkey and call it a serious candidate for EU membership? There is a serious case for including Israeli figures in this kind o

Can people really still point at Turkey and call it a serious candidate for EU membership? There is a serious case for including Israeli figures in this kind of pan-regional not-exclusively-EU analysis. Israel is far closer, culturally, to Europe than geographically closer neighbors (e.g. Morocco, Tunisia) and is increasingly part of European academic, sporting, and artistic interests (most recently thinking of Eurocrypt 2018, which was in Tel Aviv this week, and this year's Giro D'Italia, which is starting in Israel this weekend). There are strong historical reasons why Israel will never apply to be a member of the EU or to adopt the Euro - but a perspective is to think of Israel as strongly Eurosceptic. Can anyone really look at Eurosceptic parties on the Continent and say that, what, the EU defines what it means to be European? That Hungary is no longer culturally European or that it dropped off the Continent because Viktor Orbán got elected Prime Minister?

rsynnott 9y ago
As things stand, currently, Turkey's candidacy isn't going to be going forward anytime soon. But that's not the point. It is an official candidate, so Eurostat keeps an eye on it. If Israel became a candidate, Eurostat would do ditto (though for practical reasons Israel also won't be a candidate anytime soon). Incidentally, Turkey is also in a customs union with the EU, the only non-EU/EEA/EFTA country of any significant size to be in one. This gives Eurostat added incentive to keep an eye on it. Israel is a member of or involved in various non-EU pan-European things (EBU, Council of Europe etc), but Eurostat is an EU thing, not a European thing.