It was hardly the Union's finest moment, but the European gift for squabbling over details, and finessing deadlines, was shown off to good effect. In the small hours of October 4th, the British, who hold the EU'S presidency, claimed to have kept the Union's promise to launch membership talks with Turkey-on precisely the agreed date, October 3rd. It was all a matter of which time zone you were in, the Brits explained. If you went by Greenwich Mean Time, the appointed day was still in progress; never mind that in Luxembourg, where the talks were in progress, it was two hours later, and in Ankara yet another hour on. And anyway, chimed in Olli Rehn, the European Union's commissioner for enlargement, we could always have "stopped the clock" for a few hours if necessary.
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