Meer tijd voor Turkije om Cyprus (en)

The European Commission is unlikely to recommend a partial suspension of Turkey's EU membership talks over the Cyprus issue in a key report on Wednesday, with individual commissioners reportedly divided over the matter.

The Financial Times wrote on Tuesday (7 November) that Brussels is set to postpone a recommendation on whether or not to freeze the talks until a later date ahead of an EU leaders summit in December.

The commission had been considering whether to already make this recommendation in Wednesday's progress report on Turkey, according to the UK daily.

But a draft report endorsed by chiefs of the commissioners in a meeting on Monday merely says that "The commission will make relevant recommendations ahead of the December European Council."

The paper writes that the commission itself is divided over the strategy towards Turkey, which launched EU accession talks last year, but still refuses to open its ports and airports to trade from Cyprus.

The Cypriot, Greek and French commissioners - whose countries are among the most sceptical about Turkish membership - have argued Brussels should already on Wednesday propose concrete consequences for Ankara's defiant stance.

But other members of the EU executive - including commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso and enlargement commissioner Olli Rehn - reportedly want to give more space for the Finnish EU presidency to broker a deal between Turkey and Cyprus before the December summit.

The draft still needs to be rubber-stamped by commissioners on Wednesday.

Debate in Germany, Italy

The divisions within the commission reflect a similar rift within the German ruling coalition which is being highlighted by German media.

Edmund Stoiber, the leader of the Bavarian conservatives and a staunch opponent of Turkish EU membership, has urged a halt to the talks, but social democrat members of the German government - notably foreign minister Frank Walter Steinmeier - have said that "everything" needs to be done to find a compromise before the end of the year.

Meanwhile, Italian prime minister Romano Prodi has warned against stopping the negotiations with Turkey altogether, telling the Financial Times that the process will take time but "certainly you must not stop it."

"There is an idea in some parts of Europe to stop it all," he said. "But I think this is a great historical challenge."

Free speech concession

In another development, the European Commission on Monday cautiously welcomed a fresh concession by Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on freedom of expression - an issue which is set to be one of the main concerns in Wednesday's progress report along with the Cyprus issue.

Mr Erdogan over the weekend said his government is willing to revise or lift the notorious article 301 of Turkey's penal code, which penalises insults against "Turkishness".

"We expect this stated intention to be followed by concrete deeds and we are thus waiting for concrete decisions," a commission spokeswoman said.

On the basis of article 301, charges were brought against several journalists and novelists who raised the Kurdish issue or the Armenian genocide including Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk.

Turkish NGOs have in the past few weeks pressed the government to reform the article.