The EU will grant candidate status to Ukraine before the summer. But joining the Union is years, if not decades, away.
In two months, EU member states will have to make one of their most momentous decisions: Should they grant Ukraine candidate status? On Wednesday, during his visit to Kyiv, organized in top secret, Charles Michel, President of the European Council, promised that the European Commission would present its findings on Ukraine’s application for membership by the end of June. “Then it is my responsibility to assess when we can put this issue on the agenda of the European Council and the Council,” Michel said at a press conference after his meeting with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky.
The Ukrainian government had to answer around 3,600 questions from the commission in the course of this application. It is to be expected that the member states will grant candidate status to Kyiv before the summer; this is dictated by the political reality of the Russian war of annihilation against the Ukrainians. “You are not only fighting for the future of the children of Ukraine, you are also fighting for European principles and fundamental values,” Michel said in Kyiv. But it will be years, possibly decades, before Ukraine actually joins the EU. Four issues are likely to require particularly strong efforts by the EU and Ukraine to find lasting solutions.