BRUSSELS, Sept 20: The European Union cannot start entry negotiations with Turkey unless Ankara reforms its penal code, a European Commission spokesman said on Monday, just days before a Commission report on whether talks should begin.

"If this central element of reform, that is the new penal code, is not adopted negotiations cannot start," Commission spokesman Jean-Christophe Filori told a news briefing. "The Commission will make it clear that the negotiations cannot start if the new penal code is not adopted by the sixth of October," he added.

Filori later said he did not mean to imply negotiations could never start if the code was not adopted by then. The executive Commission is due to present an assessment on Oct. 6 on whether Turkey has met the political and economic criteria for starting talks on joining the 25-member bloc.

Until recently the assessment was widely expected to be positive, but that has been thrown into doubt by the failure of the Turkish parliament to adopt the new penal code because of controversy over a proposal to criminalise adultery.

EU Enlargement Commissioner Guenter Verheugen summoned the Turkish ambassador on Saturday to ask for clarification on Ankara's position on the code, but Filori said that as far as he knew Ankara had not yet provided it.

The summons followed a public row between Verheugen and Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan last week, when Erdogan bluntly told the EU to stop meddling in Turkish affairs.

Erdogan declined comment at two public appearances in Ankara on Monday, and the lack of any Turkish government reaction led to fresh falls in Turkish stocks, bonds and the lira currency.

Turkey has been seeking membership since 1963, and its ambitions have forced a debate on whether the EU should remain a European "Christian club," and what impact a poor, largely Muslim country of 70 million would have on the bloc.

This was highlighted on Monday when Austria's far-right Freedom Party threatened to end the coalition government if Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel supported Turkish entry talks.

"This would be cheating the Austrian people ... It would be the end of the EU," Heinz-Christian Strache, the anti-immigration party's deputy head, told the newspaper Kurier.

If the Commission reports that Ankara is ready to start talks, all 25 EU heads of state and government will have to take a decision at a summit in December. Erdogan will visit Brussels on Thursday and Filori said he would probably meet Verheugen then. -Reuters