The Commission wants accession talks with Kiev. However, military setbacks and high costs are provoking political resistance.
Sparrows have been whistling on the rooftops of Kiev and Brussels for weeks: on Wednesday, the European Commission will recommend, in black and white, that the EU should begin accession negotiations with Ukraine. “We are well over 90 percent of the way there,” Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said in a speech to the Ukrainian parliament in Kiev on Saturday.
But Ukraine’s road to EU membership is still very long. And the more concrete the prospect of this becomes, the clearer the obstacles to this expansion become – and not just because Moldova and the six Western Balkan states, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia also are in the turmoil of Ukraine can hope to join the Union.
1 What reforms does the EU demand from Ukraine and has it implemented?
In June last year, the Commission set seven conditions for Kiev before recommending that Member States open accession negotiations. Ukraine is likely to have met five of these requirements, as Portal news agency reported on Monday. Firstly, the reform of the selection of members of the Constitutional Court and, secondly, of candidates for the Superior Council of the Judiciary. Thirdly, a strategy for fundamental police reform, especially in the area of combating money laundering. Fourth, a law to strengthen media freedom in line with EU law. Fifth, a law to restrict the political and economic influence of oligarchs.