European Commission expects EU Council to quickly open membership negotiation clusters for Ukraine at official level
The European Commission expects that the EU Council will in the near future make a decision on the official opening of negotiation clusters for Ukraine’s accession to the EU.
European Commission Spokesperson for Enlargement Guillaume Mercier said this at a briefing in Brussels on Monday.
"When it comes to the calendar, we, the Commission, have done everything possible from the technical side. We have sent all the documents to the Council, so the Council, that is, the EU member states, can now open the first cluster as soon as they wish. So the calendar is not in our hands. For our part, we will continue to support the member states and Ukraine in this process, and we expect them to move forward quickly," he said.
Mercier emphasized that when it comes to Ukraine’s accession, the European Commission has "clearly stated many times" that "Ukraine has done everything necessary for the actual opening of the first cluster and other clusters."
"Ukraine has moved forward in key reforms despite a very difficult context, and we have seen extremely important progress. This has already been emphasized in the enlargement report we published last year, and we have repeated this several times. Even the President of the European Commission in Cyprus (where an informal meeting of the European Council took place) last week also emphasized this," the EC spokesperson added.
As is known, as of today, all six negotiation clusters are open at the technical level due to blocking by current Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. At the same time, with the change of power in Budapest, which will take place in the coming days due to Orban’s loss and the victory of opposition figure Peter Magyar, Brussels hopes that the situation will change in Ukraine’s favor and negotiations will be opened at the official level.
President of Cyprus Nikos Christodoulides, whose country holds the EU presidency, stated this on April 23 before the start of the informal summit. "I can say that as the presiding country, we have completed all the preparatory work, and if the appropriate political conditions are met, we are ready to open the (negotiation) clusters," he said.
