EU funding for Turkey low: minister

ANKARA - Anatolia News Agency

The total amount of the European Union’s pre-accession financial aid to Turkey has reached 6 billion euros in 11 years, the head of the EU’s Turkey Delegation, Jean Maurice Ripert, has said, while Turkey’s Development Minister has stated that the EU’s funds allocated to Turkey were not sufficient.

“The Union provided to Turkey only this year 900 million euros, which is the highest amount the EU has supplied to a single country,” said Ripert during an international conference held in Ankara yesterday. There are 200 ongoing EU projects worth 2 billion euros in Turkey that have been working toward implementing the Copenhagen criteria, he added.

Despite Ripert’s statement that the EU’s total pre-accession financial aid to Turkey reached nearly 6 billion euros between 2002 and 2013, Turkish Development Minister Cevdet Yılmaz claimed the amount was not satisfactory when analyzed from a per capita perspective. “The EU aid per capita is 65 euros in Turkey, far lower than the 142 euros of aid per capita received by the country ranking just above Turkey,” Yılmaz said.