BRUSSELS, July 31: A top court’s decision not to ban Turkey’s ruling party may have avoided a crisis in relations with the European Union, but the path to EU membership is still far from smooth, experts said on Thursday.

French European Affairs Minister Jean-Pierre Jouyet, whose country holds the EU’s rotating presidency, admitted that Wednesday’s decision by the Constitutional Court had come as a relief.

Many other observers in Brussels were also glad that Turkey’s Islamist-rooted Justice and Development Party (AKP) had avoided a ban. Such a ruling would have brought membership talks with Turkey grinding to a halt.

Ankara’s accession process, which began in 2005, has been littered with hurdles, but the pace, while slow, has at least been in the right direction.

“It is very good news of course, but it won’t in itself accelerate the EU accession process.” said Katinka Barysch, an analyst at the London-based Centre for European Reform.

“On the other hand, it will free the AKP people up to concentrate on the kind of things the EU has been asking for a couple of years and that the AKP has been too busy to concentrate on: economic reforms, reforming the judiciary, religious freedom and so forth,” she added.

In the wake of the ruling, EU Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn said in a statement: “I encourage Turkey now to resume with full energy its reforms to modernise the country.”

The reform process has been held up for a year by a political standoff between the AKP and powerful forces, including the army, who are defending Turkey’s secular values.If the judges had voted for the ban, that programme would have fallen by the wayside as the AKP tried to regroup under a different name ahead of early elections for a new government.

Even now, the European Union is offering no guarantees that Turkey will eventually be able to join, although its officials are continuing as before with the country’s accession process.

The EU, “attentive to the democratic functioning of (Turkey’s) institutions, will continue to closely follow the situation,” the French presidency said in a statement.

The AKP may have survived the challenge to its legality, but only by the narrowest of margins: six of the court’s 11 judges voted in favour of closing them down — just one short of the seven required to impose a ban.

And the party still had its public funding cut in half in what the court president Hasim Kilic said was a “serious warning.” Cem Oezdemir, a Turkish-born German member of the European Parliament has argued precisely because of the government’s narrow escape, Europe should give Ankara a much-needed boost.

“The EU and the member states should send a positive signal now,” said a statement from Oezdemir, a Green Party deputy.

European affairs analyst Kirsty Hughes agrees.

“The EU has come under a lot of criticism for the fact that it is rather reluctant and slow in the negotiations with Turkey, having in a sense contributed to the crisis” by arming the AKP’s opponents, she said.

From countries that have supported Turkey, “there should be a push to say:

’Look, we managed this thing in such a reluctant, slow, minimalist way, that we either have to speed this up or the EU is going to look silly’,” she said.

Acceleration, though, does not appear to be on their mind. France, whose President Nicolas Sarkozy is vehemently opposed to Turkey joining the EU, wants to open “two, perhaps three chapters by the end of the year,” Jouyet reaffirmed on Wednesday.

All EU hopefuls must negotiate 35 chapters, or policy areas, with the European Commission before being allowed on board. So far, Turkey has opened only eight and completed just one.

Eighteen others are either virtually frozen because of Ankara’s trade dispute with EU member Cyprus, or hobbled by French objections.

Hughes described this as a “ridiculous, absurdly slow process,” a pretence at negotiations. At this rate, Turkey could take a decade just to open the chapters, let alone complete them, she added.—AFP