The European Commission's report on Turkey's application to join the European Union published yesterday sets out stiff but fair conditions in recommending that negotiations with Ankara should begin soon.
It recognises fully that Turkey's accession would be different from previous EU enlargements because of the combined impact of its population, size, geographical location and its security, military and economic potential. The distinctive scale and scope of these issues is used to justify the lack of any commitment that negotiations would succeed and the use of an emergency brake procedure which would allow the suspension or even the end of negotiations if Turkish democratic and human rights reforms are reversed.
Politically this tough tone is necessary to head off opposition from those who believe Turkey is too large for the EU to absorb at this stage of its development or incompatible with European cultural, religious and social civilisational values. The strategy has been successful within the Commission and will be debated publicly between now and December 17th when EU political leaders must decide if, and when, to open negotiations. Initial indications are that this report will find favour, albeit with stiff qualifications.
The stringent democratic and economic conditions set out accept that Turkey is a European state and entitled in principle to join the EU while protecting the Union's capacity to absorb such a large and relatively poor member, possibly not before 2019.
This is a reminder that enlargement of the EU since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 has been by far the most important and successful foreign policy initiative in Europe in that time. The disciplines imposed by the enlargement criteria adopted at the Copenhagen summit in 1993 provided a framework of reform and adaptation for newly independent states - a running incentive to avoid ethnic conflict, protection for minorities and human rights guarantees. The great failure in the Balkans after the collapse of Yugoslavia disguised the successful transitions in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and Slovenia, all of which joined the EU on May 1st.
Yesterday's report also gives the go-ahead for Bulgaria and Romania to join by 2007 - indulgently so in the latter case compared with Turkey, according to several commentators.
By the time Turkey might join, the enlargement process would probably be near completion to include most of the Balkan states. But what of Ukraine?