Applicant status is a vital milestone for Ukraine, but enlargement is a big problem for the EU, writes EU Special Editor Janne Toivonen.
BRUSSELS EU leaders had only one option last night in Brussels: to accept Ukraine as a candidate.
Of course. What else could the EU have said? To offer a vague “European perspective” like Georgia?
Accepting Ukraine as a candidate for membership at a fast pace is sensible, both humanly and also in real terms.
It paves the sandy road to the west of Ukraine, instead of choosing another road, and gives it the spiritual strength to wage a fierce consumer war.
The reality is however, raw.
It is likely that Ukraine will not become a member of the European Union as it stands.
French Presidency of the EU Presidency Emmanuel Macron said the sore truth out loud last month.
– We know quite well that the process would take several years, probably several decades. That is the truth, unless we lower the bar and redefine what EU unity is, he said. said (switch to another service).
So several yearsdozens of. Weight with the latter word.
The estimate is realistic given how EU enlargement has progressed – or stalled – in recent years.
Northern Macedonia was accepted as an EU candidate country in 2005. 17 years have passed, but formal negotiations have not even begun, as Greece and Bulgaria have cracked down.
Serbia became a candidate country in 2009, Montenegro in 2010 and Albania in 2014. None of them is close to membership, although Serbia and Montenegro have been on the negotiating table for about ten years each.
All the slightest painful issues remain unresolved. Only the easy ones have made progress.
Western Balkans the countries are already starting to ripen in the stairwell, according to the Albanian prime minister Edi Raman rush to the slowness of the process.
Turkey has matured earlier. Prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was a pro-reform EU supporter in the early 2000s. France and Austria, in particular, were openly hostile to the Muslim country, even though the EU declared a bridge between the two worlds.
Optimism died out, gasoline ran out, and Erdoğan slipped into the path of autocracy in his populism.
The main responsibility always lies with the applicant himself. But it is constantly unclear whether the doors of the EU will be open, no matter what countries do.
There are countries in the EUwho do not want to club this wound any new members.
France, for example, would prefer to deepen today’s EU. Support has come from the Netherlands and Denmark, among others.
Although all EU countries now supported Ukraine’s candidacy, they supported the beautiful idea of membership rather than the real desire to get Ukraine involved quickly.
The EU fears that internal fragmentation will increase if countries that do not meet the strict criteria join. At the same time, applicants should be kept satisfied so that they do not slip towards Russia, China or unpredictability.
The more the EU expands, the closer it will be to the strengthening of regional blocs within it.
It can shape the whole of the EU with a new faith.
Horrors of war the spirit of reform in the countries that have undergone is strong.
Let us even think about what leaps Western and Northern Europe took in the 1950s after World War II.
Ukraine’s future can be bright if it survives the war. The power of reconstruction and faith in the future is enormous.
Then Ukraine will have a real momentum to eradicate corruption and oligarchy from its structures. At the end of it is a European community of values and a close partnership.
But probably also something other than the European Union we now know.