Several member states continue to object while Brussels supports Kiev
Brussels is prepared to accelerate membership talks with Kiev by opening two “clusters” of negotiations by mid-2025, the EU Commissioner for Enlargement, Marta Kos, has said. Ukraine applied for EU membership in February 2022 and was granted formal candidate status later that year.
Joining the EU involves completing six “clusters” of talks, comprising 35 chapters of various requirements. To date, Kiev has not opened a single one.
“From the technical point of view, we can be ready to open two clusters for Ukraine in the first half of the year,” Kos told journalists during a news conference in Brussels on Tuesday. “It’s not possible without the member states,” she added.
The admission process requires unanimous consent from all 27 EU member states at each stage. Hungary, Slovakia, and Austria have raised objections to Ukraine’s membership for various reasons. However, Brussels’ leadership appeared to back Kiev.
“It’s necessary for the EU to develop further and have new member states,” the bloc’s top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, told reporters at the same press conference.
Ukraine’s deputy prime minister, Olga Stefanishina, visited Brussels to push for faster admission into the EU. Politico described her trip as part of an effort to “reinforce” Kiev’s position ahead of anticipated peace talks with Moscow.
The previous European Commission suggested that Ukraine could potentially join the bloc by 2029 if it made sufficient progress in areas such as political and judicial reforms, as well as in combating organized crime and corruption. Last June, Kiev’s envoy to the EU, Katarina Mathernova, said that 2030 was a “very realistic date.”
Ukraine made EU and NATO membership official national goals by amending its constitution in 2019. While Russia did not object to Kiev’s EU aspirations at the time, it firmly opposed any involvement with the US-led military bloc. Following the escalation of the conflict between Moscow and Kiev in 2022, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov described the EU as “an aggressive militant player that declares its ambitions far beyond the European continent.”
