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25 february 2012, melting aspic

Cyprus is just about to take on its first eu presidency. Well, two-thirds of the island is, as, across barbed wire, the rest lies outside the union. It is, depending on your point of view, either a legitimate state seeking unification, or under turkish occupation. It is a complicated issue, and one where the eu has not covered itself in glory, as one of the protagonists, greece (5 november 2011), is in, whilst the other, turkey (23 november 2011), though a noisy nato member, is out. The eu blew its best of chance of solving the problem by failing (with a greek gun to its head on the whole enlargement) to exert any leverage with the accession of the south in 2004, regardless of its attitude to a fair united nations brokered deal put to a referendum, which the south duly rejected. With the north not recognised by the union, nor the south by turkey, it has become a bone in the latter's accession negotiations, although that more represents a useful alibi for those that want to block turkey anyway. Feeling rather bad, the eu has a "special development programme" for the north, including (normal for pre-accession countries) financial aid, and also measures to increase movement across the "green line": trade across the border has consequently risen fivefold in the that time. A slight parallel is east germany (the gdr), which, with unification, became, in 1990, the first warsaw pact country to join the eu. In this case the one thing (co-operation) leading to the other (merger) took place within a very short space of time and in the very different circumstance of the big country sponsor (the soviet union) collapsing; but that the one would lead to the other was far from certain and indeed actively opposed by many for a significant time. Over a vastly longer timeframe, the eu's hopes of pulling off the same trick may yet bear fruit.