On 3 December 2020, the Antall József Knowledge Centre (AJKC) organised an online conference entitled Turkey’s EU Accession Process: The Road Ahead. At the beginning of the event, Zsolt CSEPREGI, Deputy Director for International Affairs at AJKC delivered welcoming remarks, which was followed by the opening speech of HE Ahmet Akif OKTAY, the Ambassador of the Republic of Turkey to Hungary.

The first panel discussion of the conference was entitled The Dynamics of EU Enlargement and Turkey’s Accession Process: A Historical Perspective. Speakers of the panel discussion were Zafer MEŞE, Coordinator of SETA – Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research in Berlin, and Zoltán EGERESI, Research Fellow of the Institute for Strategic and Defense Studies at the National University of Public Service, while the role of the moderator was fulfilled by Tamás KOZMA, Head of Asian and African Relations Department at AJKC. During the panel discussion the speakers provided an overview of Turkey's EU accession process, looked at key issues concerning EU enlargement, and identified the factors that led to the stalling of Turkey’s accession process.

The second panel discussion of the event entitled Current Challenges & Future Prospects of Turkey-EU Relations involved Enes BAYRAKLI, Director of European Studies at SETA – Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research, and Máté SZALAI, Programme Manager and Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Foreign Affairs and Trade as speakers, while the role of the moderator was fulfilled by Zoltán EGERESI. The purpose of this panel discussion was to analyse the issues presently shaping EU-Turkey agenda, as well as to give an outlook on the future of EU-Turkey relations, which must be interpreted in an increasingly complex system of international relations.

Watch the discussion again!