When calculating the cost of Turkish membership for the incumbent members, one must appreciate that this process is highly speculative. Not only Turkey, but also the EU are evolving and changing constantly. In addition, one cannot know with certainty what the rules concerning the budget will be...

The paper argues that the collapse of the European Council Summit in Brussels on 13 December 2003 and the failure to agree the new constitutional treaty throws the Union into a major and unprecedented crisis. Attempts by many EU politicians to talk the severity of the crisis down will not help...