Ukraine, geo-politics: EU integration, Mar 2022

President Zelenskyi renews call for fast-track EU membership for Ukraine

(for the EIU)

In a video address to Swedish MPs on March 24th the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyi, again made the case for his country to be offered full EU membership.

Almost a month earlier, the president made a similar appeal to the European Parliament, calling for Ukraine’s case to be fast-tracked. Soon after he signed a formal membership application, Georgia and Moldova followed suit. At a meeting of EU leaders held at Versailles in France on March 10th, however, no formal commitment by the EU on Ukraine’s membership statement was made. Instead, the European Commission was tasked with assessing Ukraine’s application.

The chances of Ukraine’s rapid advance to full EU membership appear slim, therefore. This is mainly because of the size of the task involved, which involves the replication and implementation of the full range of political and economic regulations built up in the EU over decades, including on such key issues as market regulation and the operation of the rule of law.

In Ukraine’s case, however, where the mode of elite politics has traditionally weighed on living standards, the process itself would be useful, even if formal membership lay in the far distance. That is, even the award of candidate status would be more than symbolic, offering a set of concrete, incrementally achievable goals driving much-needed institutional change, the main beneficial outcome of which would be governance institutions favouring greater popular political and economic participation.

That said, Ukraine’s ability to make use of such an offer will depend on the outcome of the ongoing war and, in particular, how Russia emerges from it, since Russia’s attempt to prevent Ukraine joining the EU, rather than NATO, was at the forefront of its efforts in the run up to war in 2014-15.

Fast-track membership of the EU remains highly unlikely for Ukraine, and would perhaps miss the point and value for Ukraine of the membership process. Nevertheless, amid the deep and rapid transformation of the assumptions underlying the European political order over the past month, it is not out of the question that Ukraine could be offered candidate status. Inconceivable before Russia’s invasion of February 24th, this in itself could be highly valuable to Ukraine in any post-war phase of reconstruction and reform.

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