IKV organised a webinar on “Modernisation of the Turkey-EU Customs Union: Challenges and Opportunities” in partnership with Marmara University Institute of European Studies on 5 May 2021. Director of the Institute  of European Studies Prof. Muzaffer Dartan made the opening speech of the webinar moderated by the Head of the  EU Economics and Business Administration Department Assoc. Prof. Mesut Eren. IKV Chairman Ayhan Zeytinoğlu and Austrian Commercial Attaché in Turkey Georg Karabaczek were the speakers in the webinar.

IKV Chairman Ayhan Zeytinoğlu started his speech by sharing information relating to trade between Turkey; 41.3% of Turkey’s exports has been to the EU while 33.4% of its imports has been from the EU during 2020 and that 62% of the foreign investments in Turkey is from the EU countries. While emphasizing that the Customs Union helped Turkey become an important manufacturing centre in the world, IKV Chairman stated that Turkey, today, is faced with a number of issues such as transport quotas, transit fees, lack of a dispute resolution mechanism and the challenges posed by not being a party to the FTAs the EU signs with third countries. Chairman Zeytinoğlu further said that the Customs Union which at the moment covers only industrial and processed agricultural products should be modernised to include all agricultural products, services and public procurement. He made a point about the political obstacles stalling the modernisation of the Customs Union and mentioned the issues the Turkish public face for not having visa liberalisation.

In his speech, Austrian Commercial Attaché Austria Georg Karabaczek said that the trade volume between Turkey and Austria has almost increased sevenfold since 1995 to reach 3 billion euros in 2020, 80% of which took place within the Customs Union. He further said that trade in services amounted to 1.1 billion euros between the two countries showing that the modernisation of the Customs Union to include services would benefit both parties. Karabaczek referred to the Customs Union between the EU and Turkey as not fully responding to today’s trading requirements and said that 76% of the participants of the survey they carried out among the Austrian companies active in Turkey were in favour of the modernisation of the Customs Union. Karabaczek counted the non-tariff barriers, the origin certificates, the need for registration of chemicals and TAREKS applications among issues causing challenges for the Austrian companies trading in Turkey. The webinar came to an end after a Q&A session.