Austrian Chancellor Christian Kern told a German daily on July 27 that when it comes to Turkey’s European Union accession hopes "it has to be legitimate to say: 'You simply are not a membership candidate'."

Speaking to German daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Kern added that the EU would not stand a chance of ever overcoming the negative economic impact that Turkey joining the bloc would cause.

Austria has long been one of the staunchest opponents of the idea of Turkey eventually becoming an EU member state, but Kern’s comments come at a particularly sensitive time for Ankara given the warnings served to the Turkish government by the European Commission’s enlargement and diplomatic heads in a meeting with the Turkish foreign and EU ministers on July 25 in Brussels.

At that meeting it was made clear that, even though the Commission was not accepting a motion from the European Parliament that Turkey’s accession talks should be suspended, the country could not expect the accession talks to make significant progress unless Ankara halted the slide to authoritarianism that Brussels sees as having taken place since a state of emergency was introduced after the July 2016 attempt at overthrowing President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the Turkish government was foiled.

Kern reportedly added: "In purely economic terms, Europe could never, ever digest Turkey's accession. How is that supposed to work?"

Austria, one of a number of EU member states that have argued for freezing the accession talks with Turkey, believes Ankara has crossed “nearly all the red lines" in areas such as the treatment of journalists and lawmakers, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung also reported the Austrian chancellor as saying.