Nathalie Tocci, EU Accession Dynamics and Conflict Resolution. Catalysing Peace Or Consolidating Partition in Cyprus‪?‬

Nathalie Tocci, EU Accession Dynamics and Conflict Resolution. Catalysing Peace or Consolidating Partition in Cyprus? (London: Ashgate, 2004) ISBN 0754643107 (hardback); 216 pages; 55 [pounds sterling]. On 21 April 2004 European Union (EU) Enlargement Commissioner, Gunter Verheugen, made an unusually strong statement. He said: "I am going to be very undiplomatic now. I feel cheated by the Greek Cypriot government. We had a clear agreement on this point. Mr Papadopoulos must respect his part of the deal. Under no circumstances was a resolution to the conflict to fail as a result of opposition from the Greek Cypriot authorities." (1) The reason for Verheugen's despair was that a large scale effort to broker a peace deal on the island of Cyprus involving the United Nations (UN) and, for the first time, the EU was about to fail. On 24 April 2004 Greek and Turkish Cypriots decided in separate and simultaneous referenda on whether a united Cyprus would join the European Union on 1 May 2004. While Turkish Cypriots accepted the UN blueprint with 64.91% in favour, Greek Cypriots rejected it with an overwhelming majority of 75.83%. The EU had hoped that the incentive of EU membership would have worked as a catalyst for a solution. While it certainly had a decisive effect on political changes both in Turkey and in Northern Cyprus the process was finally torpedoed by the Greek Cypriot side. Apparently, this came as a shock to the European Commission. How could it be that the entire Union did not anticipate this development? Was the EU wrong to think that the framework of the Union could have helped to find a solution on the island? Or did the Union's efforts simply fail because of poor management of the concept? These questions are addressed in Nathalie Tocci's study on the connection between EU accession dynamics and conflict resolution in Cyprus.