Brussels is ready to speed up membership talks with Kiev by opening two “clusters” of negotiations by mid-2025, the EU Commissioner for Enlargement, Marta Kos, has stated. Ukraine utilized for EU membership in February 2022 and was granted formal candidate standing later that yr.
Becoming a member of the EU entails finishing six “clusters” of talks, comprising 35 chapters of varied necessities. To this point, Kiev has not opened a single one.
“From the technical standpoint, we will be able to open two clusters for Ukraine within the first half of the yr,” Kos instructed journalists throughout a information convention in Brussels on Tuesday. “It’s not doable with out the member states,” she added.
The admission course of requires unanimous consent from all 27 EU member states at every stage. Hungary, Slovakia, and Austria have raised objections to Ukraine’s membership for numerous causes. Nevertheless, Brussels’ management appeared to again Kiev.
“It’s crucial for the EU to develop additional and have new member states,” the bloc’s prime diplomat, Kaja Kallas, instructed reporters on the similar press convention.
Ukraine’s deputy prime minister, Olga Stefanishina, visited Brussels to push for quicker admission into the EU. Politico described her journey as a part of an effort to “reinforce” Kiev’s place forward of anticipated peace talks with Moscow.
The earlier European Fee steered that Ukraine might probably be a part of the bloc by 2029 if it made enough progress in areas similar to political and judicial reforms, in addition to in combating organized crime and corruption. Final June, Kiev’s envoy to the EU, Katarina Mathernova, stated that 2030 was a “very reasonable date.”
Ukraine made EU and NATO membership official nationwide targets by amending its structure in 2019. Whereas Russia didn’t object to Kiev’s EU aspirations on the time, it firmly opposed any involvement with the US-led navy bloc. Following the escalation of the battle between Moscow and Kiev in 2022, Russian International Minister Sergey Lavrov described the EU as “an aggressive militant participant that declares its ambitions far past the European continent.”
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