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		Letter to the Editor The Sunday Telegraph - Sunday, 10th October 2004 Dear Sir, I am a great fan of Roger Bootle, whose articles appear in your Business Section. But I must take issue with his piece on the 10th, where he urged the accession of Turkey to the EU. He gave two reasons: first, that Turkey's accession would benefit the Turkish economy. This may be true -- but Turkey is a vast and largely poor country which will impose vast burdens for many years on the existing member states. There are no compelling reasons why the EU's foreign aid should be directed disproportionately to Turkey -- which is what, in effect, we should be doing. His second reason: that Turkish accession would necessarily lead to a looser and more flexible Europe. If this forecast came with a guarantee, I should be the first to accept it. But yet again, as so often in the EU, we are invited to trade a real and present asset (in this case, our voting weight in the EU institutions) for vague projections of future benefit, which may never materialise. Integrationists and sceptics share the same diagnosis: that a larger and more diverse EU will be more difficult to manage. But we have diametrically opposite prescriptions. Sceptics demand a looser and more flexible structure. But the European Commission sees only the need for more central control to solve the problems of diversity. And the Commission's view is writ large in the EU Constitution, which places huge new powers in the hands of the EU institutions. If we sceptics could have the kind of EU we want -- more like a free trade area, less like a political union -- then we should be happy to welcome Turkey, and all countries of goodwill, as members. Yours faithfully, Roger Helmer MEP East Midlands Region