European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is rebuffing questions about whether an application from Ukraine for “immediate membership” of the EU will be granted as the Russian invasion intensifies.
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Signing the official request last week, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy urged the bloc’s leaders to accelerate the process of making Ukrainians “equal members of Europe” in order to “prove that you are with us” in his country’s battle against Vladimir Putin’s forces.
“Do prove that you will not let us go. Do prove that you are indeed Europeans and then life will win over death and light will win over darkness,” he said during an address to the European Parliament via video link. “The EU will be much stronger with us.”
Path to membership
As the fighting in Ukraine intensified over the weekend, von der Leyen “declined to say” whether Ukraine would be permitted to become the 28th EU member state, Politico reported. Speaking to CNN on Sunday, she also refused to be drawn on whether the EU would ban all imports of oil and gas from Russia.
The official stance of the EU is to “stand united in its solidarity with Ukraine” and “continue to support Ukraine and its people together with its international partners, including through additional political, financial and humanitarian support”.
The governing European Commission also states that the bloc has “reacted swiftly and decisively” to Moscow’s invasion of the neighbouring nation, “adopting further restrictive measures in response, that will have massive and severe consequences for Russia”.
Zelenskyy’s address to the European Parliament last week was greeted with a standing ovation, with many MEPs wearing “#standwithUkraine T-shirts bearing the Ukrainian flag”, Reuters reported.
“We are with you,” said Commission Vice-President Maros Sefcovic. “And we will be with you to rebuild your beautiful country after your victory.”
But Kyiv is facing a “cold reality”, as some experts warn that it is “unlikely” that Ukraine will be handed “special treatment” in the “lengthy and complex accession process” that normally comes with joining the bloc, the Financial Times (FT) reported.
The EU and Ukraine already have an association agreement that came into force in 2017. Under the deal – signed following the 2014 ousting of Ukraine’s president Viktor Yanukovych – the eastern European country began implementing reforms required for membership.
Kyiv has cooperated with the bloc on economic policy and regulation across areas including equal rights for workers; steps towards visa-free movement of people; justice reform; the modernisation of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure; and access to the European Investment Bank.
The agreement also meant Ukraine was committed to economic and financial reforms to bring its policies and legislation into line with those of the EU27.
The EU “sets tough criteria for would-be members”, the FT said. Applicants have to “show they respect human rights, have a market economy and agree to adopt the euro and the EU rule book”.
The last country permitted to join the bloc was Croatia, which was admitted in 2013, following a decade of reforms and negotiations. Five other countries have also opened accession talks but are not yet members: Albania, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia and Turkey.
“There is significant sympathy in the bloc” for Zelenskyy’s calls for Ukraine to be admitted as a matter of urgency, said The Guardian’s Brussels bureau chief Daniel Boffey. But “it may lead to no more than warm words”, Boffey added.
‘Special relations’
The European Parliament endorsed Zelenskyy’s application for membership on 1 March. But that “is mostly a symbolic message”, according to Euractiv. “Every decision related to EU enlargement must be unanimously approved by the EU’s 27 member countries,” the pan-European media network explained In a guest article published in The Kyiv Independent.
And while “it is not entirely impossible (though still not very likely) that the country receives candidate status quickly, as a political message”, Ukraine is up against “longstanding enlargement fatigue and scepticism in some member states”, and the risk of the fast-tracking being “perceived as unfair” by other countries seeking membership.
That said, “special relations might be another interim possibility, whereby Ukraine would get access to the EU single market as well as possible access to EU funds”.
The Guardian’s Boffey said that “if anything approaching coherent can be gleaned” about Putin’s intentions in Ukraine, “it is that the country should be demilitarised, neutral, and that it should have no prospect of joining the Nato military alliance”.
But “if there is a diplomatic way out of the crisis, sources suggest that some sort of fig leaf to Putin on the military side might form part of an agreement if Kyiv felt confident that its political future” lay “with the EU”, Boffey wrote.
“I think one of the reasons that this is important for President Zelenskyy is also potentially in some of the discussions with Russia on a way out,” an unnamed EU official told the paper. “I view myself the European Union as a project that is grounded and based upon peace, the solving of conflict through dialogue through working together. I don’t think the European Union has a record of presenting a military threat to any partners.”
So a peace agreement with Russia may be more likely if it includes “a guarantee that there is understanding for Ukraine belonging one day to the European Union”, the source continued.
“Russia’s invasion of its neighbour has sparked some unprecedented responses,” the FT said. But the odds of Ukraine joining the EU any time soon appear to be low, according to Mikaela Gavas, a senior policy fellow at the Washington D.C.-based Center for Global Development think tank.
Gavas told the paper that “Ukraine would have to navigate and close 35 chapters on EU standards and legislation across all policy areas” at a rapid pace in order to formally join the union.
“Not only does Ukraine’s poor economic capacity, which is being exacerbated by the conflict, put it in a difficult position, there are also longstanding questions about corruption that would need to be answered,” Gavas said.
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