Austrian Mess

Die Presse.com - Alles schneller www.issen

Well, a compromise has been reached among the Foreign Ministers of the European Union in Luxembourg on the starting of accession negotiations with Turkey.

Neither a full text nor a rection from Ankara is yet available, but judging by media reports it looks as Vienna lost the battle after having isolated itself in an increasingly untenable position.

They have now accepted that membership is the aim of the negotiations - something which they declared themselves against a couple of days ago.

Now, it looks as if they are flagging up the capacity of the Union to accept Turkey as the key demand. That's another way of saying that Turkey might be too big and too different.

But the bottom line is likely to be that Austria lost. There might well be storm waves on the domestic scene in the country. I'm sorry for an otherwise good government in Vienna.

And one of the ironies is that Austria, after having been hesitant over parts of the completed Eastern enlargement of the Union, has been one of the countries benefitting most clearly from it.