HISTORY is turning full circle for Austria as it takes over the six-month presidency of the European Union from Britain.

A little over three centuries ago Austrian forces, reinforced by their Polish allies, dashed the Ottoman Empire’s aggressive ambitions for Western Europe when they defeated the Turkish army at the second siege of Vienna.

Ironically, having been the bulwark against Turkish military expansion in 1683, Austria now finds itself representing its 24 EU allies in handling Ankara’s diplomatic campaign to win a place at the European Union’s top table.

But more recent history, too, makes this a difficult task for Vienna. Last October Austria, which contains Europe’s third-largest Turkish expatriate community after Germany and France, almost disrupted EU plans to open formal accession negotiations. It argued instead for a privileged partnership with Turkey, which stopped well short of full membership.

Its stance reflected strong domestic hostility to the inclusion of a large economically underdeveloped Muslim country within the EU’s borders.

The opposition was also used, successfully, as a tactical ploy to force its EU partners to agree to open parallel entry negotiations with Croatia.

Turkey has already made clear that, after the preparatory work of the past few weeks — hailed as one of the few triumphs of an otherwise disappointing British presidency — it is looking for substantive entry negotiations to begin early in the year, even if these take a decade or more to conclude.

Abdullah Gul, the Turkish Foreign Minister, said recently: “We expect actual negotiations to start in the first months of 2006.” However, Ursula Plassnik, his Austrian counterpart, is already playing down expectations. “It is too early for me to judge whether it will be possible to start one or the other chapters in the first half of the year,” she said shortly before Christmas.

In contrast to the caution it is showing towards Turkey, Austria, once at the heart of the former Habsburg Empire, is determined to use its geography and history to focus the eyes of Brussels on the Balkans.

It is looking to move forward accession negotiations with Croatia and will play a key role in deciding whether Romania and Bulgaria — where it is the largest foreign investor — meet the EU’s entry requirements and can join next January or must wait a further year.

To prevent any possible backsliding among existing members, notably France, the Austrian Government intends to reaffirm the EU’s existing commitment, first made two years ago, that the western Balkan countries’ future lies firmly in a “European perspective”.

It will put this into practice by inviting government representatives from Croatia, Bosnia, Albania, Serbia Montenegro and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia to attend, for the first time, all the informal ministerial meetings, ranging from foreign affairs to education and justice, of their EU counterparts. “We want to concentrate on practical issues and keep them engaged,” one Austrian official said.

The presidency has not had the most auspicious of starts. The Government was forced to intervene to remove posters from an art festival showing pornographic images of the Queen, President Bush and President Chirac.

The immediate challenge facing the Austrian presidency is to nail down the budget agreement that Tony Blair brokered before Christmas. Legally, the European Parliament and Commission can still reject the seven-year EU package and Vienna will need to work behind the scenes to stop it unravelling. In the longer term Austria, which along with 12 other EU members has already ratified the treaty, will have to recommend whether finally to scrap the draft European constitution or try to salvage some of its less controversial elements.

CHALLENGES FACING AUSTRIAN PRESIDENCY OF THE EU