EU/TURKEY: CSU-CDU is calling on other European conservative leaders to offer Turkey only a 'privileged partnership', writes Derek Scally.
The European Union will not survive as a political union if Turkey is admitted, according to the leading German conservative, Mr Edmund Stoiber.
Mr Stoiber, the Bavarian Minister-President and leader of the Christian Social Union (CSU), said he didn't believe the EU was "a Christian club", as the former chancellor, Dr Helmut Kohl, once remarked, but said admitting Turkey would lead to "a severe breach of solidarity in the EU".
"The EU of today is a political union, and I am convinced, just like the majority of Germans, that admitting Turkey into the EU would overwhelm it," he said to foreign journalists in Berlin yesterday.
He added: "I think the acceptance of the EU in Europe would be considerably affected."
The CSU leader's remarks come just days after Dr Angela Merkel, the leader of the CDU sister party, circulated a letter calling on other European conservative leaders to block Turkey's full membership of the EU, offering instead a "privileged partnership".
The CDU-CSU position has caused huge debate in Germany - home to more than two million Turks - and considerable displeasure in Ankara.
One of the loudest critics of the CDU's current line is the party's former leader, Dr Helmut Kohl.
Although he once remarked that "Turks treat the Kurds as we wouldn't have the right to treat animals", Dr Kohl has since revised his opinion, and four years ago his son married a Turkish woman.
Now Dr Kohl belongs to the wait-and-see camp, but says that, after decades of keeping Turkey waiting, it is unacceptable to negotiate with Ankara on the basis of anything other than full membership.
Mr Stoiber rejects this argument, saying: "I never gave any promises. That promise was made at a time when we had no European political or economic union."
He said it was "wishful thinking" that a modern Turkey could act as a bridge to the Middle East, saying that Turkey's EU membership would make little impression on countries like Syria, Iran or Iraq. American interest in seeing Turkey in the EU was purely a defence matter, he said.
"I don't think the Americans are interested in a strong Europe. That is our goal," said Mr Stoiber.
The CSU leader called on Berlin to intervene in an increasingly bitter war of words with Warsaw.
Poland has reacted furiously to proposals by Germans who lost property after the second World War in what is now Poland to pursue compensation claims through the European courts.
Last week the lower Polish house of parliament, the Sejm, hit back by adopting a non-binding resolution saying that Poland "had not received adequate financial compensation and war reparations" and calling on the Polish government to lodge compensation claims against Germany.
Both Warsaw and Berlin have distanced themselves from the respective claims, but Mr Stoiber called the Sejm resolution an "irritation" and called on the Chancellor, Mr Gerhard Schröder, to intervene.
"There are people with difficult histories who lodge claims because they were expelled. We are of the opinion that this problem should be solved internally.
"That means that the government should come to an agreement with the expelled and rebuild the relationship with Poland," said Mr Stoiber.
His wife of 36 years, Karin, is a Sudeten German, expelled with her family and three million others from the present-day Czech Republic.
Mr Stoiber, a gaunt 62-year-old with rimless glasses and snow-white hair, cut a somewhat ascetic figure next to Mr Schröder in pre-election television debates two years ago. He failed to unseat Mr Schröder then, but harbours hopes of a second chance in 2006.
Those hopes are pinned on the stellar economic performance of his state of Bavaria, home to 12 million people. Once the poorest federal state, it has retained its traditional image but at the same time attracted huge high-tech investment.
Mr Stoiber is proud to tell anyone within earshot that Bavaria will next year be the first federal state in 35 years to present a balanced budget.
Outside Bavaria, where the CSU has ruled for four decades, the wind may have changed for the conservatives.
After two years of riding high in opinion polls with more than 50 per cent backing, they are rapidly losing support in the polls. The CDU lost nearly 16 per cent and its overall majority in last weekend's state election in Saxony.
Mr Stoiber rejects the argument of many analysts in Germany that the CDU-CSU was strong, not on its own merits but on the weakness of the government.
"If unemployment stays at 4.4 million then a government will not find acceptance with voters," he said.
Mr Stoiber is similarly dismissive of speculation about Mr Schröder's apparent new-found energy and determination to push through his reform programme, halfway through his second term of office.