The European Commission recommends that Ukraine and Moldova be granted EU candidate status. Linked to this, however, is the expectation that both countries will undertake major reform efforts. There are still many more hurdles to overcome.
The step can only be considered symbolic – it is historical in any case: On Friday the European Commission spoke out in favor of officially appointing Ukraine and Moldova as EU accession candidates. Commission President Ursula von der Leyen explained that she would recommend to the European Council (i.e. the member states) that they should firstly give the two countries a “European perspective” and secondly give them candidate status.
In keeping with the occasion, the head of the commission chose an outfit in the national colors of Ukraine – a blue shirt and a yellow jacket. There should also be no lack of solemn words. The Ukrainians are “ready to die for the European perspective,” said von der Leyen, referring to Russia’s war against the country. You have to enable them to “live the European dream”.
No blank check
However, the recommendation of the Brussels authorities is not a blank check. Rather, it is linked to the “prerequisite” that both countries carry out “a number of other important reforms” in the area of the rule of law and the fight against corruption, von der Leyen specified.
On the one hand, the Commission found that Ukraine had made “great progress” in building the necessary institutions for a functioning judicial system. Likewise, Kyiv has “come far” in the fight against corruption by creating the necessary positions and appointing a new prosecutor. A “courageous” law against oligarchs recently passed by the Ukrainian parliament is also to be commended.
On the other hand, said von der Leyen, the Commission now expects Kyiv to implement the many promises of reform and to make further efforts, for example when it comes to protecting national minorities. Regarding the country’s ability to guarantee a functioning market economy – this is also a key criterion for accession – the President of the Commission mentioned that Ukraine still has a budget deficit of only two percent and a national debt of less than 50 percent.
Of course, this data was collected before the war, as von der Leyen also admitted. Overall, according to the Commission’s assessment, Ukraine has a “solid macroeconomic balance sheet” and “remarkable resilience”, which must be further promoted with “ambitious structural economic reforms”.
That sounds like well-coiffed facts and a lot of purposeful optimism, if you take the pre-war assessments of the political maturity of Ukraine by independent observers as a benchmark. The country was ranked 122nd out of 180 countries in Transparency International’s most recent corruption index. The European Court of Auditors has confirmed that Kyiv has fundamentally failed in its fight against corrupt public prosecutors and oligarchs. And in the “Pandora Papers”, a data set with leaked information from worldwide tax havens, the name Selenskis also appeared.
It is no secret in Brussels that Ukraine would not have had a chance to become a candidate for accession in times of peace. In the face of war, in which Ukraine is literally fighting for its existence, the assessment of the “geopolitical commission”, which von der Leyen wants to be the office of, is obviously merciful.
Delivery for Georgia
The Commission also recommends candidate status for Moldova. Here von der Leyen said only briefly that the assessments in detail went in the same direction as for Ukraine. Only Georgia, which submitted an application for membership together with Moldova at the beginning of March, will probably have to be patient.
For the government in Tbilisi there can currently only be a “European perspective”, said von der Leyen. This means that the Caucasus state still has to meet conditions in order to be admitted. Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo currently have a comparable status as «potential» accession aspirants.
With the Commission’s recommendation, Ukraine’s desire to join has cleared a first hurdle. The statement initially only serves as a basis for a possible decision by the EU states. The heads of state and government want to discuss the issue at a summit at the end of June, and there the positions are still far apart. France and Germany are now also supporting the Ukrainians’ desire to join the EU. Countries like the Netherlands, Denmark and Portugal, on the other hand, do not want to rush things.