Summary — Aim of this paper is to outline the distance between Turkey and European Union in the field of the economic and human development. The main conclusion is that the gap between these two dimension of development is still quite large but the major distance with the European Union refers to the latter aspect. The macroeconomics indicators shown that the strong Turkish economic growth of the past years is declining but in the same time also the inflation rate is diminishing and taking also into account the first positive results of the structural adjustment programme defined with the IMF in 1998, the European Commission gives a positive opinion of the Turkish economy.