The Court of Justice in Luxembourg has ruled that the listing of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) by the EU as a terrorist organization between the years 2014 and 2017 was unjustified, Deutsche Welle Turkish service reported on Thursday.
The court annulled the decisions made by the member-states during the period in question on the grounds that procedural errors were made in the listing of terrorist organizations.
The court further argued that EU countries had failed to provide adequate justification for their regulations and decisions that constituted the basis of the PKK’s listing.
The verdict will have no concrete effect, however, as it is limited to the years 2014-2017 and it has no bearing on the current status of the PKK as a terrorist organization since it is included on the 2018 terrorist list, which the ruling does not call into question.
The case arose from a lawsuit filed by a Dutch law firm in 2014 on behalf of senior PKK members Murat Karayılan and Duran Kalkan objecting to the PKK’s inclusion on the terrorist list.
Since 2002, the PKK has been recognized as a terrorist organization by the EU, which accuses it of trying to establish a Kurdish state or an autonomous region in Turkey’s Southeast through armed violence. After 2002, all of their accounts and assets in EU countries were frozen.