Facilitating Smallholder Farmers’ Market Access
In the OIC Member Countries
82
was especially deep, resulting in the Ankara Agreement, also known as the Association
Agreement, signed in 1963 and put into effect in December 1964. At the heart of the
Agreement was the phased establishment of a Customs Union meant to comprehensively
integrate the two economies.
As is often the case, primary agriculture presented many hurdles. The Agreement states
that the Association will extend to agriculture, but under special rules (see the next
section). Nevertheless, the integration of the other sectors of the two economies moved
forward in a substantive way. Under a series of agreements, the European Commission
abolished restrictions on imports of most industrial goods from Turkey in 1971, and
Turkey implemented two rounds of tariff reductions on EEC goods in 1973 and 1976. To
bolster Turkey during an economic crisis, the Council of Association reached an agreement
to phase out the customs duties on agricultural products imported into the EEC. After
years of stalled progress, plans for the final stage of the Customs Union accelerated in the
late 1980s, and implementation of the Union began in 1996. In 1999, Turkey was officially
recognized as an EU candidate country, and in 2001 the Association Council adopted an
Accession Partnership for Turkey. The Council adopted a Negotiating Framework in 2005.
Negotiations began in 2006, nearly 42 years after the Ankara Agreement.
AGRICULTURAL TRADE POLICIES AND THE CUSTOMS UNION
Agriculture remains outside of the Customs Union, yet exclusions have been carved out
over time. At the start, the Agreement strictly defined what was meant by primary
agriculture, based on definitions in the Treaty of Rome. An important distinction was that
most products produced by agribusinesses were treated as manufactured goods. A 1970
Additional Protocol overcame some of the initial hurdles to trade in primary agricultural
goods and laid out the expectation that agricultural goods would move freely within 22
years. The Protocol also called on Turkey to align its domestic policies with the EEC’s
Common Agricultural Policy. Two subsequent Council decisions in 1995 and 1998 further
reduced the distinction between primary agriculture and other traded goods. Limits were
place on technical barriers to trade, including trade in foodstuffs, and an additional round
of tariff reductions was launched.
The decades-long process of lowering barriers to agricultural trade has brought about a de
facto free trade agreement between the EU and Turkey for most agricultural goods.
Processed food items fall within the Customs Union, and the remaining barriers to primary
agricultural goods have been hollowed out by tariff reductions and special exceptions. The
OECD recently concluded that about 70 percent of Turkish exports to the EU enter duty
free.140 In addition, Turkey is required to align its third-party tariffs to those reached
under free trade agreements struck by the EU.
140 OECD (2012).