France, Germany plan 'symbolic' EU membership perks for Ukraine – media

Germany and France have called for Ukraine to be granted "symbolic" benefits at the pre-accession stage, excluding EU agricultural subsidies and voting rights, the Financial Times said.

"Germany and France have called for Ukraine to be granted 'symbolic' benefits in a pre-accession phase that excludes EU farming subsidies and voting rights, falling short of Kyiv’s hopes of fast-track membership following a potential peace deal with Russia," the newspaper said in a report on Monday.

It said President Volodymyr Zelenskyy sees EU membership as one of the key benefits of any peace deal and argues that his country should join the bloc as early as 2027. However, the EU's biggest members have rejected European Commission proposals to bypass the bloc's slow and bureaucratic accession process in order to give Kyiv faster benefits.

German and French proposals, set out in separate documents seen by the Financial Times, cool any hopes in Kyiv that the war-torn country could be granted privileged status in its bid to join the bloc.

Germany is pushing for the status of an "associate member," under which Kyiv would take part in meetings of ministers and leaders but would have no voting rights and "no automatic application" of the shared EU budget.

According to the newspaper, France describes such intermediate membership as "integrated state" status, under which access to the Common Agricultural Policy and EU funding such as cohesion policy "should be postponed to a post-accession phase."

The recent election defeat of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who had vetoed the start of Ukraine's EU accession talks, had raised some hopes for progress. However, the overwhelming majority of EU members remain deeply concerned that giving Kyiv and other candidates accelerated entry would disrupt the bloc's political dynamics and undermine the value of membership.

Significant EU farm subsidies under the Common Agricultural Policy and regional funds – which together account for about two-thirds of the current EU budget - would be postponed to a post-accession phase." However, the "light" version of membership would include EU mutual defense provisions.

Importantly, both countries stress that this lighter version is not an alternative to full membership but an "easy-to-implement substantial shortcut towards it," in Berlin's words, which would "play an accelerator role towards it," as Paris put it.