From Mr Josko Paro.

Sir, Just as the European Union leaders made a decision to begin membership talks with Croatia on March 17 2005, a map and two articles ("Brussels to give Turkey a reluctant welcome", December 17 2004, and "Spectre of enlargement haunts the EU", January 7 2005), suggested the year 2015 as a possible time by which Croatia might join the EU. It is, of course, an entirely impossible and indeed a thankless task to try to predict the length of time any negotiations might take and therefore surprising that the Financial Times has twice picked the year 2015, thus by far overshooting even the predictions of the worst pessimists.