Turkish membership gets 14bn price tag

Just weeks before the European Commission publishes its yearly assessment on Turkey's efforts to become an EU member, a study has shown that it would cost billions a year for the country to join the club.

Preliminary estimates made by the Osteuropa-Institut, a Munich-based research outfit show that Turkey's membership of the EU could cost up to 14 billion euro a year.

This kind of figure is similar to the cost of the EU absorbing ten mainly central and east European countries into the Union, as it will do next year.

The institute is due to publish its final figures at the end of this year, Die Welt reports.

Much polemic has surrounded the question of whether Turkey should join the EU. As a candidate country, it has yet to start formal negotiations for EU membership.

The EU decided at the Copenhagen Summit in December 2002 that if its assessment report of Autumn 2004 concludes that Turkey has achieved the political criteria for joining the EU, member states will open accession negotiations "without delay".

Speaking to the 'Welt am Sonntag' , Enlargement Commissioner Günter Verheugen said, "Much more important is the question, what should the EU in which Turkey will be a member look like. Some changes in [the EU's] structures will have to be carried out in order to take on such a large and heavily populated country".