European Union foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said on Sunday she felt that EU governments were not ready to give Ukraine a date for membership despite a demand to do so from President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
Zelenskiy repeated on Saturday that he needed a date as part of security guarantees for a final peace package with Russia. “My feeling is that the member states are not ready to give a concrete date,” Kallas told a panel at the Munich Security Conference. “There’s a lot of work to be done.”
Ukrainian EU membership in 2027 was pencilled into a 20-point peace plan discussed between the United States, Ukraine and the European Union, diplomats have said, as a measure to ensure Ukraine’s economic prosperity after the war ends. But many EU governments believe that date, or any other fixed date, is completely unrealistic because EU accession is a merit-based process, moving forward only when there is progress in adjusting a country’s laws to EU standards.
Latvian President Edgars Rinkevics echoed the Kallas comments but held out little hope of an imminent peace deal.
“Yes, we understand that we need Ukraine in the European Union and, yes, when talking with many heads of state I get the feeling there is no readiness to accept a date,” he said.
Rinkevics said that the EU had always been creative when there was a real need and could probably find a formula that suited the bloc, but it would also need to assuage Western Balkan states and Moldova, which have long been vying for membership.
“Like it or not it is very much tied to the peace deal. Will there be a peace deal or not? I don’t see that Russia is going to move, and if Russia is not moving, then we are not going to have a deal,” he said.
Ukraine applied to join the EU days after Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022, seeking to anchor itself politically and economically to the West.
It has been pushing to make progress on its bid, despite the challenges of the war and opposition from EU member Hungary, which is blocking the start of detailed membership talks.