Russia pushes more countries to EU

 

Russia pushes more countries to EU

Georgia and Moldova submitted formal applications to join the EU on Thursday, piggybacking on a move by Kyiv to seek fast-tracked entry into the bloc in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The wave of applications from the former Soviet republics presents a major challenge for the EU as it seeks to signal solidarity with Kyiv but at the risk of making empty promises to candidate countries and stirring up one of the union’s most divisive issues.

There are deep divisions inside the EU over enlargement as a concept. Some, mainly eastern, member states see expansion as a means to stabilise the region, while others fear that applicant members lack the economic clout, democratic values and rule of law credentials to maintain unity.

The desire of the three countries to speed up the entry process will also heighten demands from already existing applicant countries, especially those in the Western Balkans that have been waiting for as long as 18 years just for a membership timeline.

The topic of enlargement was “extremely sensitive”, said one senior EU official, cautioning against knee-jerk decisions “that will create new parameters and have strong implications for the union”.

“Some member states are pushing for accession [for Ukraine] as soon as possible, others are a bit cautious and some are a bit sceptical given the context,” the official added.

Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president, formally applied for EU membership this week as his army sought to hold off an invasion from more than 100,000 Russian troops. Moldova and Georgia formally followed suit on Thursday.

All three are members of the EU’s Eastern Partnership programme and have association agreements with the bloc, granting preferential trade access among other benefits.

On Wednesday Georgia’s president told the Financial Times that the EU needed to speed up its membership process to shield the country from possible Russian aggression, noting that the EU’s lack of clarity on Ukraine’s admission may have encouraged President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of the country.

Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia’s applications are expected to be discussed at an informal summit of the EU’s 27 heads of state and government in Versailles next week.

“Enlargement is the elephant in the room,” a second EU official said of the EU’s desire to assist primarily Ukraine but also Moldova and other countries affected by Russia’s war.

EU leaders have publicly encouraged Ukraine in its bid for membership of the union — among them Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president, who said on Sunday that the country was “one of us” and that she wanted it in the EU.

However, the process of gaining EU membership is laborious and complex, and is not down to the commission’s president.

Following an application, the Council must decide whether to request an opinion from the commission about the country, which advocates of Kyiv, Tbilisi and Chisinau’s applications hope can be delivered in an accelerated timeline, rather than as long as 18 months as normal.

All 27 member states would then need to unanimously grant the country candidate status, paving the way for accession negotiations.

Officials in Brussels warned that such a process would take years. And if new applications were to be fast-tracked, the risk is that countries in the Western Balkans that have been waiting for decades would feel sidelined.

There are already five candidate countries whose applications have been in progress for years — Albania, the Republic of North Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Turkey. Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo are seen as potential candidates.

While the messages of support are warranted, “some people are getting carried away” and signalling things that the EU will be unable to deliver in a rapid manner, said one EU official familiar with enlargement discussions this week.

This week the European parliament added to the push for Ukraine to gain candidate status, while insisting this should be granted “on merit”. Pedro Marques, a Socialist MEP, said that the commission should perform its assessment quickly, adding that it was important to “respond to this European ambition positively”.

But he said the parliament’s resolution was specifically focused on Ukraine and the particular position it is in. When asked about other candidates, he observed that “we have a number of countries already in the process of accession for a number of years and we have frustrated the ambitions of some of these countries to which we have promised the possibility to come to the EU — particularly North Macedonia and Albania”.