Ukraine may still be dominating the news cycle in Europe. But in Kyiv, there are jitters that its bid to join the EU is slipping off the front page.
An informal update on the process from Brussels widely expected in April is more likely to arrive in late May, according to EU and Ukrainian officials. It’s poor timing for Kyiv, which is now also quarreling with some of its closest EU allies over a glut of Ukrainian grain shipments that depressed local prices and left farmers fuming.
The incidents are crystallizing a difficult reality for Kyiv: Joining the EU was always going to be hard. It will take time for Brussels to sort through the logistics. It will be difficult to maintain political support during the bureaucratic lulls. And countries will be increasingly anxious about the economic turbulence that may result from integrating more than 40 million Ukrainians and their major industries into the EU.
On the logistics front, EU officials close to the membership process are playing down the significance of the upcoming update, stressing that their commitment was only to deliver one by the spring. The more important update will come this fall, they note, when the European Commission delivers its regular enlargement report.
But for Ukraine, the earlier assessment is vital to keeping its bid chugging along.
“It’s very important for us politically domestically, as it shows the commitment to Ukraine politically,” Olha Stefanishyna, Ukraine’s deputy prime minister for European and Euro-Atlantic integration, told POLITICO in an interview. “The spring assessment will allow us to mobilize our efforts to close pending loopholes when it comes to our efforts to tackle corruption, before the major enlargement report, which will be formally released in October.”
‘Reality check’
Thus far, Ukraine has moved with alacrity through the EU’s membership process. It received formal EU candidate status last June in record time. Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal told POLITICO in an interview earlier this year that Ukraine’s aim is to join within two years.
But Ukraine may have bigger problems to worry about than the latest readout from Brussels on its progress.
In recent weeks there has been growing alarm in some Central and Eastern European countries about a flood of Ukrainian products coming into the EU that are affecting local farmers.
In a move that has infuriated the European Commission and true believers in the sanctity of the EU’s single market, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and Bulgaria halted imports of grain and other food products from Ukraine — a move that has angered the EU given that trade decisions are delegated to Brussels, not individual countries.
The crisis has spotlighted a dilemma dogging Ukraine’s bid for EU membership — whether the EU is really prepared to integrate such a massive country into the union.
One senior EU official branded the moment a “reality check” for the bloc. “Yes, this is becoming a big question.”
The official listed the fraught questions the EU would eventually have to answer before Ukraine joined: How does it revise the so-called Common Agricultural Policy, which protects food supply and farmers’ incomes, to accommodate Ukraine’s robust agriculture industry? How does it deal with the “cohesion fund” payments Ukraine would receive as a poorer EU member?
“The question is who is going to pay for that, what will be the contribution?” the official said. “All those questions take years, sometimes decades, to address.”
Most alarming for Ukraine is the fact that some of its staunchest allies — including Poland and Slovakia — are the ones leading the move to ban Ukrainian imports. The restrictions are a rare breach in the relationship between Kyiv and Warsaw, with Ukraine criticizing Poland’s decision.
Late Tuesday, Poland said it would start letting Ukrainian produce transit through the country but not stay there.
EU officials stress that the current crisis is a specific problem, noting that the excess grain is destined for non-EU countries, not the single market. The Commission on Wednesday said it will offer the countries help moving surplus Ukrainian grain — and keep open the possibility of imposing tariffs at a later stage.
Nonetheless, Ukraine’s status as a major agricultural producer is a key concern for several EU countries when it comes to Ukraine’s long-term bid to join the union, given the implications this would have for the Common Agricultural Policy, which comprises a huge chunk of the EU budget.
‘Key source of unity in Ukraine’
In reality, Ukraine’s aspiration to join the EU within two years was always just that — aspirational. But for Ukraine, it’s an aspiration that’s driving not only morale on the battlefield, but also much-needed governance and constitutional reforms as the country seeks to clean up its act as a prerequisite for EU membership.
“More than 90 percent of Ukrainian people support European integration,” said Stefanishyna, the Ukrainian deputy prime minister, noting that the desire to join the EU is a “key source of unity in Ukraine.”
“It is an extremely important mobilizing instrument within the country,” she added.
Stefanishyna said accession talks — the intense negotiating period to align a candidate country with EU policies — should be launched before next year’s European Parliament elections, slated for early summer.
“The very final decision this European Commission and this European Council can do before the election … is open accession talks,” she said. “That’s my task and the task of my government. The priority for President [Volodymyr] Zelenskyy is to make sure that we lay all the necessary background for these decisions to be taken.”
