The foreign minister made it clear that “Ukraine is part of Europe,” Schallenberg said. But he had already argued with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy during his visit to Ukraine in February that “I’m not sure whether full membership of the European Union is the only way.”
beware of expectations
As the Austrian Foreign Minister, it is important to him that the Western Balkans region, which has been waiting for the EU for years, is not forgotten, he stressed again. He takes it. “We have to be very careful about the signals we send out, and secondly, we have to be very careful about the expectations we create,” warned Schallenberg.
The Eastern Partnership could “no longer exist because one state has been brutally attacked by a third country, another has more or less given up its sovereignty – namely Belarus”. In addition to full EU membership, there are “all kinds of third countries that have close ties to the European Union,” Schallenberg said, referring to Switzerland, Britain, Norway and Iceland. “I think we still have some room for discussion here,” he said. “We have always said that there should be no shortcuts – that is, a fast track” – but that EU membership is a process that has its stages.