The leaders of France, Germany, Italy and Romania said they were in favor of granting Ukraine immediate official status as a candidate for European Union membership. Shortly afterwards, the European Commission announced on June 17 that it had validated Ukraine’s application for membership.
This declaration is a very strong message from three major Western European countries and Romania in favor of granting candidate status to Ukraine, a decision that will be taken by the European Council. It is important to note the change in position of Western states, which until now have been reluctant to accept the idea that Ukraine, the second largest European country with a population of 45 million, could become a candidate.
A country’s application to the EU commits it to a membership process. To do so, the country must meet the Copenhagen criteria, which are 35 criteria for membership, ranging from respect for the rule of law to the acquis communautaire (meaning the ability to assume the obligations of membership, including adherence to the objectives of political, economic and monetary union), as well as economic and social reforms.
For Ukraine, it is particularly difficult to ensure stable institutions and a viable economy when it is in the grip of armed conflict. Yet another of the main pillars of the Copenhagen criteria is word for word : stable institutions guaranteeing democracy, the rule of law, human rights and the respect and protection of minorities.
While the war rages on, the Franco-Italian-German message wants to put an end to the division of European countries, between those who were pushing for membership, such as Poland, and those who were more reticent, particularly with regard to past integrations that may have been judged a bit hasty. Think of Bulgaria or Romania, whose entry into the EU in 2007 did not prevent the maintenance of a strong corruption.
A candidacy granted in correlation with the geopolitical context
Obviously the main factor is geopolitics and the invasion of Ukraine. But until 2021, neither France, nor Germany, nor Italy were particularly in favor of Ukraine’s entry into the European Union. On the contrary, there was a great deal of mistrust towards this country, linked to its relationship with Russia, since it had been at war with Moscow since 2014. The mistrust was also due to the poverty (the Ukrainian GDP was 60% of that of Romania, one of the poorest countries in the EU, even before the conflict began) and corruption of Ukraine (rank 122 out of 193 in the International Transparency Scale in 2021). The war has completely changed the situation.
On the French domestic front, this statement by Emmanuel Macron comes between the two rounds of the legislative elections and obviously, for the president, it is also a message sent to the electorate. He wants to make Ukraine a symbol of his European commitment, of his support for the construction of the European Union and, more broadly, for Western values. These domestic concerns are not absent from the approach of Chancellor Scholz, who has been heavily criticized in his country for the low level of arms deliveries to Ukraine. That said, it’s giving the feeling of positions taken by European leaders for personal and internal interests.
That status would be perceived by the Ukrainians as a guarantee of their anchorage in the West. Recall that the current crisis started in 2013. When the Ukrainian government of the time, led by the pro-Russian Victor Yanukovych, refused an association agreement with the European Union, demonstrations broke out on Maïdan Square and the new, pro-European majority concluded this agreement. Ukraine has thus made a societal choice in favour of liberal democracy and Western capitalism.
Moreover, Ukraine hopes to draw concrete economic benefits from this eventual membership. In 1990, at the end of the communist experience, Poland and Ukraine were very poor, they had the same GDP per capita. Today, Poland has a GDP of $15000 per capita, which is four times higher than that of Ukraine. Obviously, Ukrainians see this difference and aspire to the prosperity of the European Union states.
But candidate status is not synonymous with automatic membership, as the example of Turkey shows…
The granting of candidate status is the first step on a long road. Several candidate countries have not yet joined the European Union. This is the case of Turkey, but also of the Balkan states, from Montenegro to Serbia, via Albania. If we take the example of Poland, it obtained its candidate status in 1900 and joined the EU in 2004. Romania obtained its status in 1995 and waited until 2007 to join the European Union.
However, it is conceivable that accession could be accelerated on the basis of political criteria, as was more or less the case with Greece, which emerged from the dictatorship of the colonels in 1974 and joined the EU in 1981. It was a strong political signal, a support for the young Greek democracy and the entry of the first orthodox and Balkan state. The current situation is so special that it probably calls for a new reflection by the EU. The last entry was in 2013 (Croatia, which has just adopted the euro), and since then, it was rather the Brexit that had attracted attention in 2016. But a signal to Ukraine can also set a precedent for other candidate countries, which are getting impatient. Hence the French idea, still vague, of a European political community. This would bring together other democratic nations of the Old Continent, members or not of the European Union.
According to the French president, this organization should allow “the democratic European nations that want to share and uphold our set of values to find a new area of cooperation in the fields of politics, security, energy, transport, investment, infrastructure and the free movement of people”. These countries could thus benefit from increased cooperation with other European states before a possible accession to the EU.
On the note of defence, the expansion of the European Union has always been coupled with membership in the Atlantic Alliance. Of the 27 EU member states, 21 belong to NATO and this number will increase with the accession of Sweden and Finland. The same parallelism applies to the candidates. Macedonia, for example, which has been an EU candidate since 2005, joined NATO two years ago.
The European Union alone, however, offers protection. The Lisbon Treaty contains Article 42.7 on collective security, which was activated in 2015 during the attacks in France. But to benefit from it, one must be a full member of the EU.
https://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/explainers/understanding-ukraines-euromaidan-protests
By The European Institute for International Law and International Relations.
