The EU Commission, the EU Parliament and the President of the Council want to speed up the procedure for candidate status.
No one could resist his dramatic appeals. The President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskij, appealed to the European Parliament in a live broadcast on Tuesday afternoon not to abandon his country and to admit it to the EU. “We fight for freedom. But we are also fighting to become a member of Europe with equal rights.” His dramatic description of the situation after five days of the Russian invasion left no one in the room indifferent. When he finished his short speech, the deputies stood up and applauded for several minutes.
A few hours earlier, in the midst of fighting against the Russian invaders, Zelenskiy had signed an application for membership of the European Union in Kyiv. It is the first proposal to be made in the middle of a war and which now puts the EU institutions under pressure. Eight Central and Eastern European presidents have already signed a demand to immediately grant Ukraine candidate status and to start accession negotiations. “We, the Presidents of the EU Member States Republic of Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Republic of Estonia, Republic of Latvia, Republic of Lithuania, Republic of Poland, Slovak Republic and Republic of Slovenia, firmly believe that Ukraine deserves an immediate prospect of EU membership,” it said it in a joint letter.