I was going to react to the article as well, as it is full of contradictions and wishful thinking.

The French are right to defend their national model because that's where real sovereignty and democracy is, but at the same time their model is fucked up and they need a serious wake up call from being coddled and over protected... Right.

This is a case of a right wing anglo euroskeptic (what's the right spelling of that word, btw?!) writer whose racism (Turks are poor and messy) overwhelms the desire to smack the French for being obsolete... Strange bedfellows.

Anyway, i recommended the diary because we should keep on discussing this topic, but I strongly disagree with the idea that Turkish membership will start a wave of immigration to rich Europe (I agree that the fear exists, and that politicians play that card a lot, but I think it is utterly false). Again:

• the Turks are already here in Europe;
  
• the experience of previous enlargements, especially Spain and Portugal, shows that it triggers migrations the other way round as people go back to take advantage of the opportunities in their home country;
  
• quite simply, we are very likely to need them to stave off population decline in countries like Germany.

In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes