15. Calls on the Turkish Government, in order to address the ongoing backlog of cases, to bring its regional courts of appeal, which were legally due to be operational by June 2007, into operation as soon as possible and to focus on training judges for this purpose;

the language of proceedings before any local or regional division should be the official language of the Contracting Member State hosting the division or the official language designated by the Contracting Member States sharing a regional division; the parties should be free to chose the language in which the patent was granted as language of proceedings subject to the approval of the competent division; the language of proceedings before the central division should be the language in which the patent concerned was granted; the language of proceedings before the Court ...[+++]ass=yellow2> of Appeal should be the language of proceedings before the Court of First Instance;

However, these efforts need to be continued, and concerns remain with regard to the independence, impartiality and effectiveness of the judiciary such as the composition of the High Council of Judges and Prosecutors and the establishment of the regional courts of appeal.

There has been no progress on the composition of the High Council of Judges and Prosecutors or on establishment of the regional courts of appeal.

20. Calls for more guidance from the Commission on how to put the partnership clause into practice under current programmes, and for sufficiently binding rules on partnership in future regulatory texts, particularly as regards the involvement of regional and local authorities, i.e. elected bodies, which are essential partners in the whole process;

The Joint Conclusions call inter alia for the political dialogue between the parties to “include exchanges of views on more recent political issues such as Weapons of Mass Destruction, Counter-terrorism and the International Criminal Court”, and recommend that “reciprocal trade liberalisation be continued and possibly accelerated, taking into account the sensitivities on both sides , the regional dimension and the time schedule for the ongoing negotiations concerning the Economic Partnership Agreement in Southern Africa”.