Fnlargement has been one of the European Union's great successes, bringing stability and democracy to parts of the continent which have had too little of either. But the policy is about to be put to its biggest test. On October 3rd, the EU is due to open negotiations with the biggest and most important country to have asked for membership so far. That country is Turkey. Turkey first applied to join what was then the EEC in 1959. The two sides signed an association agreement in 1963 (implicitly accepting that Turkey could be a candidate); a customs union in 1995; and the EU officially accepted Turkey as a candidate for entry in 1999. Turkey has, in short, been asking to join Europe for so long that its application is starting to look old and moth-eaten—so much so that some diplomats and politicians seem to have forgotten the strategic reasons for entertaining it.
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