In this interview excerpt, Wilfried Martens, Belgian Prime Minister from 1979 to March 1981 and December 1981 to 1992 and President of the European People’s Party (EPP) since 1990, gives his response to the accusations sometimes made that the EPP encouraged the emergence of a right-wing Europe by agreeing to work with the British Conservatives, with José Maria Aznar’s People’s Party and with Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia. He also discusses the so-called ‘bungalow’ conservations organised by Federal Chancellor Helmut Kohl in Bonn to determine the criteria that should be applied when deciding which European conservative parties to accept within the EPP.

In this interview excerpt, Wilfried Martens, Belgian Prime Minister from 1979 to March 1981 and December 1981 to 1992 and President of the European People’s Party (EPP) since 1990, discusses the lively debates within the EPP on the possible exclusion of the Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP) of Chancellor Wolfgang Schüssel, which was accused of joining forces with the Austrian Liberal Party (FPÖ) of populist Jörg Haider to form a government.

In this interview excerpt, Wilfried Martens, Belgian Prime Minister from 1979 to March 1981 and December 1981 to 1992 and President of the European People’s Party (EPP) since 1990, describes the EPP’s changing position on Turkey’s accession to the European Union as well as the relations between the EPP and the Justice and Development Party or AKP (Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi) led by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.