President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has made it clear to the European Union that Ukraine is aiming for membership as soon as possible. “We hope to start integration negotiations this year,” assured the Ukrainian president at a press conference following the historic EU-Ukraine summit that brought leaders of the EU institutions to Kyiv amid the Russian-instigated war. “The integration of Ukraine is irreversible,” he stressed. Next to him, in one of the magnificent rooms of the Presidential Palace, the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, and the President of the European Council, Charles Michel, have highlighted their “efforts” and the “steps” they have taken to meet the integration requirements fulfill, but they also reminded you that the program has no shortcuts. “It’s a process based on performance,” emphasized Von der Leyen, “there are no rigid deadlines, but there are goals that must be achieved.”
Ukraine received the candidate country label in June, just three months after submitting its application, at one of the peaks of Russia’s aggression, which will soon last a year. His acceptance as a prospective member was really explicit. And this has worried some Member States, who do not want progress to be too rapid and lose elements of the necessary reforms in the judiciary, the fight against corruption and respect for minorities living in the country along the way. At the end of the year, after the European Commission’s progress report, the member states would then have to answer the question “what the next steps will be,” stressed Michel.
The long-awaited summit meeting, which was the culmination of two days of intense, unprecedented meetings between EU leaders and the Ukrainian government in a clear gesture of support, took place at the Mariinsky Palace in Kyiv, commissioned by US Russian Empress Elizaveta Petrovna in 1744. A setting from another time, far from the military environments to which Zelensky accustomed the audience and his visitors. The war, however, is in every detail: in Zelenskyy’s black military jersey with the Ukrainian shield, in many of his ministers in khaki suits occupying the front rows, in the “Glory of Ukraine” that Zelenskyy, Michel and Von der Leyen have recited .
The most present memory of the conflict was abroad. Russia has not let Ukraine forget for a day that the war is ongoing and has no intention of stopping, and since early morning air raid sirens have been sounding across the country. Also in Kyiv, where the European delegation had to wait in an air raid shelter. “This is the reality in Ukraine, living proof that Russia is failing miserably and Ukraine is winning and standing up,” von der Leyen noted.
Before the leaders, Zelensky returned to call for more sanctions. Especially against the nuclear sector, and in particular against the Russian state-owned nuclear company Rosatom, which provides services to various countries including Hungary, the community country that has been most outspoken against the strategy of sanctioning Moscow for invading Ukraine.
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