Minister of Foreign Affairs Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu paid a visit to Brussels on 18 May 2015 to attend the 53rd Meeting of the Turkey-EU Association Council.

Before the meeting, Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu and the Minister for EU Affairs and Chief Negotiator Volkan Bozkır attended an unofficial dinner together with Edgar Rinkevics, Foreign Minister of Latvia which holds the EU Term Presidency, Federica Mogherini, the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and Johannes Hahn, EU Commissioner for European Neighborhood Policy and Enlargement.

At the 53rd Meeting of the Association Council, which is the highest decision making body between Turkey and the EU, the developments which have taken place concerning the accession process of Turkey within one year since the previous meeting of the Association Council as well as all aspects of Turkey-EU relations were reviewed.

Speaking at the joint press conference held after the meeting, Foreign Minister Çavuşoğlu said “The speed of the accession negotiations are far from satisfactory due to political obstacles put by some countries. We emphasized, once again, that political considerations must be put aside and technical process should be advanced without further delay.

On the other hand, Minister for EU Affairs and the Chief Negotiator Bozkır stated that we focused on the opening of the 17th Chapter entitled Economic and Monetary Policy, that Turkey is in harmony with the EU substantially on this Chapter and called for “the opening of this chapter at the earliest time possible”.