It is no surprise that the European Union's plan to start membership talks with Turkey on Monday should be a cliff-hanger right to the end. The desultory courtship between Brussels and Ankara, over nearly 40 years, reflects the controversy surrounding Turkey's candidacy. For, if or when Turkey takes its seat in Brussels in a decade or more, it would be the Union's poorest and most populous member, with the biggest vote in the Council of Ministers. To complicate matters further, the onus on Turkey to prove its European values will be heavier than it was for previous accession candidates within the conventional boundaries of Europe

The cliff-hanger arises from Austria's insistence that, in the negotiating mandate that EU governments must agree for accession talks to open, Turkey should be offered an explicit "partnership" alternative to full membership. All 24 other EU states, and the Turks themselves, are content for the mandate to contain only a vaguely worded fall-back to create the "strongest possible bond" between Ankara and the EU if in the end full membership talks fail. Britain, desperate to chalk up the first achievement of its half-year EU presidency by launching Turkish accession talks, has called a special foreign ministers meeting tomorrow night to press Austria to back down.