Today, Friday, Kyiv will host the Ukraine-EU summit, which will be the first of its kind since the start of the special operation and granting Ukraine the status of a candidate country for joining the European Union.
The main topics of the summit will be the issues of Ukraine’s accession to the European Union, the so-called “peace plan” of the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky to resolve the conflict, assistance to the country’s society, as well as food security.
The EU will be represented at the summit by the Presidents of the European Council and the European Commission Charles Michel and Ursula von der Leyen, the head of EU diplomacy Josep Borrell, as well as 14 key European commissioners who arrived in Kyiv. on Thursday.
A senior EU official said on Wednesday that the summit’s detailed program would be kept secret “for security reasons” but leaders of the bloc and Ukraine would discuss four main issues.
The four topics will be “Ukraine’s accession process, the EU’s response (to the conflict in the form of Kyiv aid and sanctions pressure on the Russian Federation), President Zelensky’s 10-point plan, the global peace plan and food security.”
According to the diplomat, in the context of Ukraine’s membership, a lot of attention will be paid to the reforms that Kyiv must implement in order to join the union, and he said: “The summit recognizes that there is progress in the reform process, but at the same time, reforms need to be continued, especially in the fight against corruption. This will be an important part of the discussion.”
According to the representative of the European Union, the final press conference will not be broadcast for security reasons, and the meeting will end with the adoption of a joint declaration.
Even before the start of the meeting, it became clear that on one of the topics named, Ukrainian expectations do not coincide with European reality, and Kyiv hopes at this summit to receive Brussels’ promises to soon join the Union, however, as a source in the delegation of one of the European countries said in the Council of the European Union that this won’t happen.
He said: “The countries of the European Union will agree that Ukraine has come a long way, has made great strides in reforms, but there will be no promise of quick membership.”
Meanwhile, according to the source, the eastern EU countries are in favor of accelerating the process of Ukraine’s accession: “Some countries, mainly from Eastern Europe, insist that at such a difficult moment for Ukraine, it is necessary to make a promise of early accession … but not everyone shares this opinion, in particular, it is the large member states who believe that empty promises to Kyiv should not be worth it.
As Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmygal said last week, the country’s authorities expect us to join the European Union in less than two years after the start of negotiations, and Zelensky believes that accession negotiations should begin this year.
On June 23, 2022, the heads of state and government of the European Union decided to grant Ukraine and Moldova the status of candidates for accession to the Union, and the dates for the start of negotiations on Ukraine’s accession to the European Union have not yet been determined. has been determined.
Brussels said that Kyiv needed to work hard and carry out important reforms in order to move forward on the path to joining the European Union, while the Union also indicated that Ukraine could join only after the end of the armed conflict on its territory. .
Source: TASS
