The candidate status for Ukraine and Moldova is purely symbolic. For various reasons, the EU is currently reluctant to accept new members.
Each of the six heads of state and government from the Western Balkans had three minutes to speak at the summit meeting with the EU in Brussels on Thursday, said Albania’s Prime Minister, Edi Rama. “I told him: We don’t need 30 seconds if you deliver. But they didn’t deliver,” he said.
You: These are the EU states which, as expected, did not succeed in persuading the collapsing Bulgarian government to veto accession negotiations with North Macedonia. And since the EU only wants to treat North Macedonia as part of a package with Albania, this veto also applies to Rama. There was also a cold shower for Kosovo’s hopes that the EU would finally implement the completed visa liberalization agreement. The image of a Union whose most recent accession – that of Croatia in 2013 – is likely to be the last indefinitely is becoming more and more solid. The agreement of the 27 EU leaders to grant candidate status to Ukraine and Moldova does not hide the fact that this policy has reached an impasse: it is a purely symbolic decision, and neither Kyiv nor Chisinau came a millimeter closer to a hypothetical one EU membership.