EU membership ‘a long way off’ for Ukraine

EU’s president to pledge continued support for ‘Ukraine’s further European integration’, while warning its membership still faces many hurdles.

Ursula von der Leyen is expected to warn President Zelensky privately that EU membership is many years away. Picture: AFP

The European Union will warn Ukraine that membership remains a long way off, despite Kyiv’s ambition to join the bloc by 2025.

President Zelensky will host a meeting in Ukraine’s capital between his government, the EU’s most senior officials and European commissioners.

Arriving in Kyiv for her fourth visit since Russia’s invasion a year ago, Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president, pledged the EU’s continuing support.

“We are here together to show that the EU stands by Ukraine as firmly as ever. And to deepen further our support and co-operation,” she said.

Privately, behind the warm words during talks, she will caution Ukraine that its membership application, accepted last year, still faces many hurdles and that EU entry is many years away.

France, Germany, Italy, Belgium and the Netherlands are concerned that Von der Leyen and other senior EU officials, such as Charles Michel, the president of the European Council, have fuelled “unrealistic” expectations in Ukraine.

🇪🇺🇺🇦 We have never been closer.

Today we agreed to integrate Ukraine further into our Single Market and include it in key EU programmes.

We are also working on extending tariff-free access to our market and free roaming. https://t.co/iwkc1wd4xR

— Ursula von der Leyen (@vonderleyen) February 2, 2023

“There is no fast track for Ukraine and the criteria are objectively defined and not a matter of rhetoric,” said a senior EU diplomat.

Last month, Michel told Ukraine’s parliament that “the question of EU membership has been answered”. “We must spare no effort to turn this promise into reality as fast as we can,” he told the Verkhovna Rada.

Following the speech, Denys Shmyhal, Ukraine’s prime minister, insisted that Ukraine could be a full EU member in two years - by the end of 2024.

With @ZelenskyyUa and @vonderleyen we opened joint meeting of @EU_Commission & 🇺🇦 Government. We discussed 🇺🇦's implementation of the EC's recommendations & further progress towards 🇪🇺 membership. Grateful to our friends for their visit to Kyiv & their support. 1/2 pic.twitter.com/K3MCptsn8M

— Denys Shmyhal (@Denys_Shmyhal) February 2, 2023

EU diplomats fear, however, that Ukraine is still a long way from meeting tough Brussels criteria to join. Last year President Macron warned Kyiv that the application could take decades.

North Macedonia has been an EU candidate for 18 years, Albania has been an applicant since 2014 and Turkey’s application was accepted in 1999.

Corruption scandals in Ukraine, including yesterday’s (Thursday’s) raids on Ihor Kolomoisky, one of the country’s richest men, and a purge of officials have highlighted EU demands for reforms and a clean up of administrative structures.

While the EU will, according to a draft declaration, repeat a “commitment to support Ukraine’s further European integration” it will be noted that “further steps”, including formal talks, will only come “once all conditions are fully met”.

The visit of the EU’s most senior officials is intended as a symbolic expression of support and increased practical aid to Ukraine.

The memorial wall for Ukrainian soldiers killed since the Russian invasion, in front of St Michael's Golden-Domed Monastery, in Kyiv, Ukraine. The Kyiv visit by EU’s most senior officials was described as ‘a very strong signal’ to Russia and the world. Picture: Getty

“It is a very strong signal that we are in Kyiv during the war. It’s a signal to the Ukrainian people. It’s a signal to Russia. It’s a signal to the world,” said a senior EU official.

The EU has earmarked almost 60 billion euros in aid to Ukraine, including nearly 12 billion euros of military support and 18 billion euros in concessionary loans to help Kyiv pay the state’s bills.

Sergey Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, today (Friday) lashed out at von der Leyen and accused the West of seeking to destroy Russia.

“Ursula von der Leyen said that the outcome of the war should be the defeat of Russia, the kind of defeat that for decades, for many decades, [means] Russia cannot restore its economy,” Lavrov said in comments aired on Russian state television. “Is this not racism, not Nazism - not an attempt to solve ‘the Russian question’?”

Lavrov has often sought to compare Western military assistance to Ukraine to the Holocaust. He drew fire from Israel last year when he said that Hitler had “Jewish blood”.

He also criticised what he said were NATO’s attempts to transform Moldova, the former Soviet state that neighbours Ukraine, into a new centre of “anti-Russian” sentiment. “It’s president is eager [to join] NATO,” he said. “She is ready for anything.”

Maia Sandu, Moldova’s pro-western president, told the Politico website last month that the country needed to decide if it should join “a large alliance” to defend itself. Russian soldiers have been based within the breakaway Moldovan region of Transnistria for more than three decades.

The Times