EU'S IMPACT IN OUR DAILY LIFE IN 100 AREAS

The handbook titled "EU's Impact in Our Daily Life in 100 Areas", prepared through cooperation of the Secretariat General for EU Affairs and Open Society Foundation in order to contribute to the strengthening of the public opinion towards the EU negotiation process was updated for the 5th time and was started to be distributed.

72 page long handbook dealing with issues such as the fundamental rights, women, children, agriculture, animal husbandry, fisheries, food safety, consumers, transport, working life, disabled people, education, environment and animal rights was prepared in order to contribute to the raising of the level of awareness towards the issue by means of setting out the impacts of various measures which Turkey has adopted or will adopt on different segments of the society.

The handbook the first version of which aroused a great interest when it was published in 2007 was requested from every corner of the country via telephone and e-mail and was downloaded thousand times from the Internet. The handbook which was published in ten thousand pieces through cooperation of the Secretariat General for EU Affairs and Open Society Foundation was started to be distributed throughout the country.

Commenting on the handbook in the foreword section, Minister for EU Affairs and Chief Negotiator Egemen Bagis stated that Turkey's future lay in the EU and the EU was an important process in terms of strengthening of Turkey, development of democracy and rising of individual rights to the European standards.

Stressing that this process was to the common interest of all citizens in Turkey; military, civilian, young, old, employee, employer, Alevi, Sunni, Muslim and non-Muslim, Bagis said that thus it was necessary to support this process together.

Indicating that what suited Turkey was to implement reforms necessary for the well-being of its own people together and to attain a modern legal order, Bagis said:

"Our goal is full membership to the EU which we can achieve through transformation we will realize in our country. Within the framework of our new EU strategy which is laid on four platforms, we are proceeding with our political reforms and negotiations in 35 chapters with determined steps. On this difficult path, alignment with the EU acquis is a very comprehensive process and it requires a serious coordination. It is also necessary to involve different groups of the society in the process.

We consider the EU process as the project of our people. Therefore we believe that people and civil society should be directly involved in this process. One of the four main pillars of our EU strategy is communication. Through our two-direction EU communication strategy, it is aimed to ensure both that the EU is perceived in our country in a right way and that Turkey is communicated and perceived in the EU member states in a right way. Within this context, we aim to eliminate the existing lack of information in Turkish and European public opinion, enhance discussions relating to Turkey's membership based on concrete information and overcome the mutual prejudices."

Indicating that they believed this handbook which they prepared in cooperation with the Open Society Foundation would serve to prevent the information pollution on the Union and bring clear explanations to the EU basics with its plain language, Bagis stated that no one should doubt whether the government which considers the EU as a modernisation project would continue to take the necessary steps on the way to the EU with determination and resolution.