Ukraine’s EU accession path might take ’15 to 20 years’, French European affairs minister says
Any kind of a fast track to Ukraine’s EU membership was excluded in the short term, French officials repeated on Sunday.
“We have to be honest (…) If we say that Ukraine will join the EU in six months, one year or two years, we are lying. It is not true. It’s probably 15 or 20 years, it’s very long,” said French Minister for European Affairs Clément Beaune.
On the other hand, the European political community proposed at the beginning of May by President Macron is “complementary to the EU” and “can offer a political and concrete project to countries that are not in the heart of the EU and that want to get closer to us”, the minister assured.
The proposed community would most likely include Ukraine, Moldova, and Georgia — who all submitted their application for EU membership since Russia’s 24 February invasion — but also countries of the Western Balkans, which have been waiting to become bloc members for decades.
The prospect of a union parallel to the EU was coldly welcomed in Kyiv and has proven to be divisive in the bloc itself.
Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Dmytro Kouleba called suggestions of anything other than full bloc membership “second-class treatment” by “certain capitals”.
On Saturday, President Zelenskyy was also clear in his intent to push for his country’s membership in the union as soon as possible, saying: “We do not need alternatives to Ukraine’s application to the EU, we do not need such compromises.”
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