Maia Sandu and Volodymyr Zelenskyy
Ukraine and Moldova are the two countries leading the way in the process of joining the European Union; earlier that same week, they took another step forward on the path to integration, writes the Kyiv Independent.
Until now, both countries’ applications for EU membership have been considered together – this was an informal political decision by EU leaders. It was expected that this practice would cease as soon as both countries had opened all six negotiation clusters – a sort of ‘roadmap’ for the reforms necessary to fully harmonise their legislation with EU standards.
“When Ukraine and Moldova are moving forward in such a coordinated manner – which is wonderful – and when we are doing so much to support Moldova and create the conditions it needs, it would simply be wrong – I hope it won’t come to that – to divide us on the path to the EU. It would be morally wrong,” Zelenskyy told the leaders of the European Union.
His argument in favour of maintaining the ‘link’ between Moldova and Ukraine in the EU accession process is based on the fact that Kyiv ‘protects Moldova from Russia’s attempts to create problems via Transnistria’ – the Russian-occupied part of Moldova’s territory bordering Ukraine.
“This requires significant effort on the part of our security services and intelligence agencies. We even have to divert part of our military forces from carrying out other tasks,” Zelenskyy said.
Moldova has not yet publicly responded to the proposal to maintain the joint application format; however, senior EU officials overseeing the bloc’s enlargement process told the Kyiv Independent that Moldova is progressing along the path to integration much faster than Ukraine.
“Moldova is transposing EU legislation faster than any other country since Hungary in 2002 — even though the volume of legislation that needs to be adopted is now significantly greater,” one senior EU official noted earlier in an interview with the Kyiv Independent.
EU leaders see things differently
On Thursday night, at a two-day summit in Brussels, EU leaders adopted conclusions on enlargement which, by all accounts, suggest the possibility of separating the accession processes for Moldova and Ukraine.
“The European Council recalls that the accession process is based on individual merit, and that each candidate country advances in accession negotiations according to its own progress,” the document states.
In any case, at this stage, the next step for both countries should be the opening of the remaining two negotiation clusters on enlargement issues; this is expected to take place before the end of this year.
This story was translated with the assistance of artificial intelligence.The translation was also reviewed by the Logos Press editorial team.
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