On the eve of a landmark summit at which EU leaders will decide on opening membership talks with Turkey, the final elements of a compromise package on the terms for the negotiations were emerging. Despite last-minute rhetoric from Turkey and those countries most sceptical about its fitness to join the 25-nation bloc, diplomats said the pieces of the jigsaw were falling into place. “I think it is time,” European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said yesterday. “We can say ‘yes’ to opening negotiations,” he told France 2 television. However, diplomats said a paragraph in the leaders’ final statement would say that negotiations are “an open-ended process whose outcome cannot be guaranteed beforehand”.

After a 41-year wait, Turkey could not join the bloc until 2015 at the earliest, and the negotiations would require a transformation of its economy and society far beyond the political and human rights reforms already enacted. Diplomats said the statement would add that whatever the outcome of the talks, the EU would keep the strongest possible bond with Turkey, implying there could be another outcome if it failed to meet EU standards or chose to go another way.

“There’s not much suspense left. It’s all coming together,” a senior diplomat in one EU capital said. Turkish financial markets, buoyed by a new deal with the International Monetary Fund, have soared this week in anticipation of a “yes”. Brussels diplomats played down the comments as intended for domestic consumption and said Erdogan was clearly on board for the deal being crafted by Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende, whose government holds the EU presidency. Under that arrangement, Turkey would commit itself to extending its association agreement with the EU to the bloc’s 10 new member states before the talks begin, thus giving de facto recognition to Cyprus.

And Turkey would have to recognise Cyprus in order to actually join the bloc, Barroso said, though he did not say this should be a condition for starting accession talks. “It is impossible to be part in a club without recognising one of the members of a club,” he said. Erdogan and Gul were due in Brussels yesterday for last minute lobbying efforts before the summit starts this evening. The official decision is expected early tomorrow afternoon. French President Jacques Chirac, who faces the strongest domestic opposition to Turkish entry, was to go on television yesterday evening to explain the issue and defend his belief in Turkey’s long-term European vocation.

Paul TAYLOR