Even before he was elected as president of France in 2007, Nicolas Sarkozy made it crystal-clear that he didn’t want Turkey to join the European Union - ever.  Now concerns are growing in Brussels that Sarkozy is contemplating a formal Franco-German initiative next year to offer Turkey a “privileged partnership” instead of, as now, the long-term prospect of full EU membership.

The idea of a “privileged partnership” has been around for a good few years.  Sarkozy likes it, and so does Germany’s ruling Christian Democratic party.  It also appeals to Angela Merkel, the CDU chancellor.  However, Merkel has up to now taken a nuanced approach, recognising that Germany, along with other EU countries, recognised Turkey as an official candidate for membership in 1999.  A responsible country cannot just wriggle out of agreements made in good faith, Merkel believes. 

The difference now is that, after last month’s German election, the Social Democrats - more sympathetic to Turkey’s aspirations - are out of government and have been replaced by the Free Democrats, whose position on Turkey is more ambiguous.  The balance of opinion in Berlin is changing.  Sarkozy may try to seize the opportunity to line up the new German government behind the concept of the ”privileged partnership”, according to EU policymakers.

Needless to say, Turkey would dismiss an offer along these lines as an insult.  There is no legal foundation for a “privileged partnership”, says Egemen Bagis, Turkey’s chief negotiator on EU matters.   You are either in the EU or not in the EU.  You cannot be half-pregnant, Bagis once told me.

The US would undoubtedly dislike such an initiative, too.  Ignoring criticism that it’s none of their business, both Democratic and Republican administrations have always encouraged the EU to accept Turkey as a full member.

Alas, Turkey’s EU membership bid is in serious trouble, anyway.  The European Commission tried to put a brave face on matters this week in its annual report on Turkey.  But the inescapable truth is that out of the 35 negotiation chapters, or policy areas, that a country needs to complete in order to join the EU, Turkey has opened 11, of which only one has been provisionally closed.  Another 12 chapters have been either formally frozen by the EU, or informally blocked by France with support from others opposed to Turkey’s bid.  The entire process risks grinding to a halt.

In December EU leaders will discuss Turkey’s failure to heed their calls to open its ports and airports to ships and aircraft from the Greek Cypriot-controlled government of Cyprus.  In theory they could take a harsh line and more or less abandon Turkey’s EU entry talks.

I doubt this will happen - Sweden, which holds the EU’s rotating presidency until December 31, is friendly towards Turkey, and many other countries think it would be crazy to adopt such a position just when negotiations on a Cyprus settlement are reaching a critical moment.

But towards the end of the first half of 2010, the picture may well look different.  April is the key month.  If the Cyprus talks are deadlocked by the time of next April’s Turkish Cypriot presidential election, and if he can get Germany on board, Sarkozy may be tempted to unveil his “privileged partnership” proposal.

Slovenia’s announcement last Friday that it is ready to lift its veto on Croatia’s European Union entry talks gave a welcome boost to the EU enlargement process.  Other than Iceland’s decision in July to apply for membership, enlargement has been running into one brick wall after another in the past couple of years.

This is partly because of petty arguments such as the Slovenian-Croatian maritime border dispute (still unresolved, in spite of last Friday’s breakthrough) which held up Croatia’s talks.  But it is also because of a certain fatigue and disillusion in many of the EU’s 27 member-states, especially in western Europe, about admitting new entrants.

The lesson some countries drew from the entry of Bulgaria and Romania in 2007 was that the EU had made a mistake in letting them join before they had met EU standards on tackling corruption and organised crime and on strengthening their judicial systems.  These problems are so entrenched that EU foreign ministers drew attention to them yet again on Monday at a meeting in Brussels.

While praising evidence of modest progress in both countries, the ministers said: “The positive changes remain fragmented and have not yet produced practical results for Romanian citizens…  The Council stresses the need for more substantial results in investigating, prosecuting and judging cases of high-level corruption and organised crime in order to secure lasting change in Bulgaria.”

This statement has serious implications for Croatia’s membership talks.  For the Slovenian veto, enforced since last December, distracted attention from the fact that one of the biggest obstacles on Croatia’s path to the EU is domestic corruption and organised crime.  (There is also the question of Croatia’s co-operation with the international war crimes tribunal in The Hague.)

Ivan Simonovic, Croatia’s justice minister, contends that his country has stronger anti-corruption mechanisms in place than some countries that are already EU members.  Perhaps he is correct as far as concerns Romania and Bulgaria.  In Transparency International’s 2008 global corruption index, Romania was ranked 70th and Bulgaria 72nd, with Croatia slightly above them in 66th place.

But with the prevailing political climate in western Europe cool towards enlargement, it would be rash for Croats to think that the EU will welcome them with open arms just because corruption and organised crime are a little less rampant than in Bulgaria and Romania.

There is a tendency in Croatia to assume that the country is self-evidently at the cultural and geographical heart of Europe - it was, after all, part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire - and that entry into the EU is therefore automatic.  But as a result of its experiences with Bulgaria and Romania, the EU sets the bar higher than it used to.

This message will come into ever sharper focus now that Slovenia has lifted its veto.

Like it or not, the European Union faces the distinct possibility that the latest United Nations-mediated effort at producing a comprehensive settlement of the Cyprus dispute will fail.  From a EU perspective, would that be a disaster?  Or just a bit depressing and annoying?  Disaster is a strong word, but the consequences of failure would unquestionably be serious.

Talks between Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots have been going on for the past 12 months, and the next round is due to be held on Thursday - having been postponed for a week, because of a row over some Greek Cypriot pilgrims who were trying to visit a church in Turkish Cypriot territory.

Nothing much has changed in the Cyprus dispute since 1974, when Turkish forces occupied the north of the island in response to a Greek-inspired coup aimed at enosis, or the union of Cyprus with Greece.  Turkish troops and settlers are still there in the north, but the Greek Cypriots control the internationally recognised government of the island.  What is more, they secured entry into the EU in 2004.  As a result, their 26 EU partners are virtually compelled to support them in anything related to the Cyprus dispute, even if some EU governments privately fume at Greek Cypriot behaviour.

Greek Cypriot public opinion seems to take the view that it would not matter much if the talks were to break down.  When the most recent UN-brokered deal was put to the two communities in referendums in 2004, the Turkish Cypriots approved it by 65 to 35 per cent, but the Greek Cypriots rejected it by a crushing 76 to 24 per cent.

The Greek Cypriots should stop being complacent, however, and read the excellent report published this week by the Independent Commission on Turkey, a panel chaired by Martti Ahtisaari, Finland’s 2008 Nobel peace prize winner.  The report describes the current peace talks as probably “the last chance for a federal settlement”.  Put another way, if the talks collapse, the Greek Cypriots will be looking at a future in which Turkey’s armed forces maintain a presence on the island for the indefinite future.  Is that what they really want?

A second unwelcome consequence would be that co-operation between the EU and Nato, so important for transatlantic relations, would continue to be blocked by differences between Cyprus and Turkey.  Lastly, the collapse of the Cyprus negotiations could torpedo Turkey’s bid to join the EU.

Here it is important that certain EU member-states, above all France and Germany, which are sceptical about Turkish entry into the bloc, show responsibility.  It would be all too easy to use the collapse of the talks as an excuse to punish Turkey and bury its membership aspirations forever.  But that would be unwise.  Holding out the prospect of membership is one of the most important levers the EU possesses to steer Turkish domestic reforms in a positive direction.

If the worst happens, and the Cyprus talks break down, the EU must still keep alive Turkey’s EU accession process.

After the fall of communism in central and eastern Europe, one compelling argument for bringing the region into the European Union was that the experience of prosperity, democracy and everyday multinational co-operation would ease national and ethnic tensions there.  Who knew, perhaps eventually it would get rid of them altogether, just as France and Germany were gradually reconciled after the second world war?

A flare-up of tensions last month between Slovakia and Hungary will serve as proof, to those western Europeans who were always hostile to enlargement, that such hopes were premature.  Worse still, it will confirm them in their opinion that, by admitting the two countries in 2004, all the EU succeeded in doing was to trap a nasty virus inside its own borders.

They are wrong, in my view, but that doesn’t mean that the Slovak-Hungarian tensions should be glossed over.  The spark for the trouble was the Slovak government’s decision to deter Hungary’s head of state from attending a statue-unveiling ceremony in the ethnic Hungarian-populated part of southern Slovakia.  The statue was of Saint Stephen, Hungary’s first king, who ruled 1,000 years ago.

To many Slovaks, Hungary’s attempt to send its president to the ceremony marked yet another example of interference in a region that Hungary had ruled since the Middle Ages, until forced to cede the area after the Austro-Hungarian Empire’s collapse in 1918.  To Hungarians, however, the origins of the episode lie in the anti-Hungarian outlook of Slovakia’s coalition government, manifested in a new language law which stipulates that only Slovak can be used in most public institutions.  Thousands of ethnic Hungarians went on the streets last week to demonstrate against the law.

All this is reminiscent of the Slovak-Hungarian tensions that persisted throughout the 1990s, especially after Slovakia became an independent state in 1993 in the wake of Czechoslovakia’s break-up.  Sixteen years ago, I spent some time in the part of Slovakia where the latest troubles broke out and, re-reading what I wrote back then, it is tempting to conclude that not a great deal has changed in the meantime.

And yet that is not really so.  There are ultra-nationalist elements in Slovakia, and they are even represented in the country’s coalition government.  But overall Slovakia is more confident in its statehood.  It joined the eurozone this year and has no interest in fomenting instability in its region.  Meanwhile, Hungary has every right to take an interest in the status of ethnic Hungarian minorities in neighbouring countries.  Perhaps sometimes Hungary oversteps the mark in a rather disconcerting way, but there is never any suggestion of violence or attempted subversion.

Tensions of this kind have such deep roots that it would be silly to expect them to disappear as a result of five years of EU membership.  But in the end, the chances that they really will disappear will be much higher if Slovakia and Hungary are in the EU than outside.

Next Tuesday, Turkey’s bid to join the European Union will creep forward one more inch.  The EU and Turkey will open formal talks on taxation, one of the 35 “chapters”, or policy areas, that a candidate for EU membership must complete before joining the bloc.

Egemen Bagis, Turkey’s chief EU negotiator, is pleased but, unsurprisingly, not overwhelmed.  After the taxation talks start, only 11 of Turkey’s 35 chapters will be open.  The EU froze another eight chapters in December 2006 in retaliation for Turkey’s refusal to open its ports and airports to vessels and aircraft from the Greek Cypriot-controlled government of Cyprus.

Visiting Brussels on Thursday, Bagis made it plain that he strongly favoured EU membership.  “I believe that the European Union is the grandest peace project in human history, and the crown of this peace project will be Turkey’s accession,” he told me and some other Brussels-based reporters over lunch.

But entry into the EU is indisputably a long way off.  Bagis recognised that Turkey would not complete all 35 chapters by 2014.  Even then, there would be huge question marks over the readiness of countries such as France, Germany and the Netherlands to approve Turkish membership.  Western European political parties opposed to Turkey’s accession performed strongly in the recent European Parliament elections.

Bagis made one particularly interesting point.  He said he foresaw three possible scenarios in the event that Turkey were to close all 35 chapters: a) Turkey immediately joins the EU; b) Turkey, like Spain and the UK in the 1960s, is vetoed but perseveres with its application and eventually succeeds in joining; or c) Turks, like Norwegians in 1972 and 1994, turn down the chance of EU membership in a referendum, even though their country meets all the entry criteria.

Bagis says that EU membership is a goal that can unite all Turks - civilian leaders and the military, northern Turks and southern Turks, Turks and ethnic Kurds, and so on.  But what if, thanks to western European opposition, Turkish society’s faith in the possibility of EU membership diminishes to the point where the goal itself no longer seems to matter?

So exciting are European Union summits that they sometimes distract attention from developments that, though perhaps less eye-catching, tell you a lot more about what’s going on in the EU.  For example, the latest two-day summit is concentrating on financial regulation, guarantees for Ireland’s sovereignty so that it can hold another referendum on the EU’s Lisbon treaty, and the nomination of José Manuel Barroso for a second term as European Commission president.

But a more interesting story was the breakdown on Thursday of EU-mediated talks between Slovenia and Croatia over their bilateral maritime border dispute.  This makes it virtually certain that Croatia will not complete its EU accession negotiations by the end of this year - the goal that Barroso and Croatia’s government had originally set themselves.

Croatia has been an official candidate for EU membership since 2005.  The slow pace of its accession talks is sending a very poor signal to the populations of other Balkan countries, such as Albania, the former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia and Serbia.  They instinctively see their future in the EU, with its implicit promises of prosperity and security.

But with Croatia’s negotiations gummed up, they are starting to wonder when they will ever get their opportunity to join.  This has serious implications for the stability of the region, which was devastated by war and economic dislocation in the 1990s and is now suffering the impact of the world financial crisis and recession.

Slovenia started blocking Croatia’s accession talks last December in what looked like a blatant attempt to exploit the fact that it was already an EU member to triumph in the border dispute.  Most other EU countries were unhappy with Slovenia’s tactics.  Six months later, however, nothing much has changed.

Why have Slovenia’s EU partners not put Ljubljana under more pressure to find a solution?  One answer is that certain countries - one thinks of France, Germany and the Netherlands - are not especially enthusiastic about enlarging the EU at the moment.  At the very least, they want the Lisbon treaty to come into force before the EU admits any new members.

Given the uncertainty over the Lisbon treaty, it would seem that Slovenia has every incentive not to speed up the resolution of its border dispute with Croatia.  And so it is that EU enlargement - one of the bloc’s policies that has been shown to work very effectively over the past 30 years - falls by the wayside.  Not very clever.

When Olli Rehn, the European Union’s enlargement commissioner, underwent his confirmation hearings in 2004, he was asked what goals he hoped to achieve by the end of his five-year spell in office. He named six: a) a EU of 27 member-states, b) Croatia’s entry negotiations in their final stage, c) other western Balkan states put on a EU path through association agreements, d) Turkey firmly on the European track, e) Kosovo’s status settled, and f) Cyprus reunified.

Speaking last Friday at a conference in Prague to mark the fifth anniversary of the EU’s “big bang” expansion from 15 to 25 (and later 27) members, Rehn claimed that he had met five of his six targets. Only Cyprus’s reunification was missing. But even on Cyprus it wasn’t all doom and gloom - talks on a comprehensive settlement had been going on since last September.

The mild-mannered and astute Rehn has been an impressive enlargement commissioner, in my view, but I beg to differ with him on how far his six goals have been met. Clearly, one target has been 100 per cent achieved: a 27-member EU. And, on a generous interpretation, you could say the association agreements reached with the western Balkan countries have indeed put them on a path to EU membership.

Some would caution, though, that one of these countries - Bosnia-Herzegovina - is, despite having secured its association accord, not really on a EU path at all. In fact, it sometimes seems on a quite different path - the path to self-destruction. So let’s say the western Balkan goal has been 90 per cent achieved.

As for Croatia, its entry talks should be in their final stages, but they are not, because Slovenia is blocking the process over a maritime border dispute. It now looks all but impossible for Croatia to wrap up its accession talks by the end of this year. Still, Croatia will probably join the EU in a few years’ time. Rehn’s goal is 75 per cent achieved.

Now the going gets tough. Is Turkey firmly on the European track? Alas, no. Opposition in parts of the EU to Turkey’s possible membership, and waning enthusiam for the EU in Turkey, place a huge question mark over whether Turkey will ever join the bloc. The membership talks are continuing, but in this case Rehn’s goal is only 20 per cent met.

Regarding Kosovo, I’d say it’s rash to call its status settled when two-thirds of the world’s countries, including five EU member-states, have refused to recognise the ex-Serbian province’s declaration of independence last year. Ask high-ranking European policymakers to bet money on whether Kosovo will be a sovereign state 50 years from now, and you do not get many takers. This goal is also only 20 per cent met.

Finally, there is Cyprus. Reunification seems a distant prospect, but Rehn is right to say that the current talks hold out some hope of progress. Ten per cent for effort.

Taken as a whole, that would give Rehn a score of 315 per cent on moving forward EU enlargement out of a theoretical maximum of 600 per cent. Given all the challenges he’s faced since 2004, I’d say that’s a strong performance - but 500 per cent it’s not.

The European Union is truly a weird and wonderful thing. Take the question of enlargement into the western Balkans (an area once known as Yugoslavia and Albania).

As is well-known, France, Germany and other western European countries have been reluctant to move the enlargement process forward as long as the EU’s Lisbon reform treaty remains blocked. Among their concerns is the fear that their electorates will not take kindly to the prospect of yet more eastern Europeans piling into the EU at a time of extraordinary economic crisis.

And yet Montenegro, which submitted an official application in December to join the EU, got an important boost this week. EU governments agreed to ask the European Commission to provide an opinion on Montenegro’s application. This is a crucial technical step forward in the process that leads to full EU membership.

But the western European governments that are nervous about enlargement were so anxious that this step should receive no publicity that the ministerial council which approved it was none other than … a meeting of EU fisheries ministers!

This is perfectly permissible under EU rules, by the way. But usually the Brussels-based media that cover the EU are not keeping their eyes peeled for this kind of artful manoeuvre.

So, on the one hand, one can say: “Well done, the EU, for helping to keep the enlargement process in motion.”

And on the other hand, one can say: “What pure political cowardice - no wonder the EU is in such trouble with its national electorates.”