The Financial Times reports on consternation in continental chancelleries over the prospect of “enlarging” the European Union by admitting Ukraine despite the fact that Ukraine does not qualify for membership under the EU’s strict entry criteria — e.g., no active armed conflict, stable borders, effective control over its territory, functioning market economy, capacity to cope with EU market competition, rule of law, independent judiciary, administrative and institutional capacity to implement EU law, capacity to be absorbed without undermining EU governance and security.
An optimistic assessment would put Kyiv at least a decade away from checking all these boxes. Yet, Brussels desperately wants a Ukraine-Russia peace deal (notwithstanding that pacts with Russia are not worth the paper they’re written on). Since the deal pushed by President Trump would entail Ukraine ceding chunks of its territory to Russia, President Volodymir Zelensky needs something he can sell at home as worth the cost after four years of ruinous war.
That something is EU membership.
But member states are aghast at the notion of enlarging the EU (even with some population loss during the war, Ukraine, with about 37 million people, would become one of the bloc’s largest states but by far the poorest one) while gutting the admission rules that other members have had to satisfy and rendering the union a less attractive proposition.
Not to worry. An unidentified “senior EU diplomat” has assured the FT: “We’re not undermining enlargement. We’re enlarging the concept of enlargement.”
Uh . . . sure.