EU declines to comment on 'associate membership' for Ukraine, says accession is based on merit, reforms

Leaders of the European Union institutions declined to comment on Germany’s proposal of "associate membership" for Ukraine, stressing that the process of joining the EU is based on merit and compliance with the criteria.

That position was voiced on Friday in Lefkosia, Cyprus, where an informal meeting of the European Council was held, by European Council President Antonio Costa and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen at a press conference, responding to journalists’ questions about reports that German Chancellor Friedrich Merz had proposed allowing Ukraine to participate in meetings without voting rights, as well as comments suggesting that Ukraine’s immediate accession to the EU is impossible.

Answering a question about how much time Ukraine would need to become a full member, Costa said that in June 2022 the EU had unanimously approved granting Ukraine candidate country status and that since then Ukraine had been working very hard with the European Commission to implement all the reforms necessary for accession to the European Union. He added that all member states understood how difficult the accession process was.

The European Council president, who represents Portugal, recalled that it had taken his country nine years to negotiate accession.

Costa said it was a long and very difficult process, and that it was impossible to artificially set a specific timeline and say whether it would take three months or 10 years. He stressed that work needed to continue as hard as possible to achieve this as soon as possible, adding that the same applied to Moldova and to the six Western Balkan countries negotiating accession with the EU.

He also said the EU would not abandon the requirement that a candidate country meet the criteria, nor the principle that the accession process is merit-based.

Costa said this meant that all candidate countries and the institutions of the European Union had to act with a sense of urgency. He added that, of course, the EU needed to be creative in solving problems and that it was not easy to conduct nine accession processes at the same time, especially with a country of Ukraine’s size and in its current situation. At the same time, he said the EU believed in Ukraine’s future and that Ukraine’s future lay in the European Union.

For her part, von der Leyen recalled that in 2020 the EU had updated the accession process methodology, so it was now based on a set of clear rules between the EU and potential candidate countries.

She said both sides relied on this framework, making it a bilateral contract for any candidate country. According to her, candidate countries had to carry out difficult reforms, and the EU expected them to move forward only if those reforms were implemented. At the same time, she noted that the reverse was also true: if they implemented the reforms, they had a certain right to move forward in the process.

Von der Leyen also stressed that granting membership to a candidate country required a unanimous decision by all member states.

She added that the merit-based path of advancing the process had to be respected so that both sides knew what they could rely on. Von der Leyen said clearly that Ukraine had worked very hard in recent months and that the Rada had undertaken quite important reforms, for example to receive European funding, and that this also had to be rewarded on the EU side.