Germany says ‘there is no shortcut’ for Ukraine to join the EU, Kiev responds

“Germany and other EU member states will always support Ukraine’s aspirations for European integration. However, some procedures cannot be ignored or accelerated,” Chancellor Scholz told the German parliament. today (May 19), according to news site Euronews.

Despite repeating the view that “Ukraine is part of our European family”, the head of the German government also said that French President Emmanuel Macron was right when he said the process to become a full member of the EU. can take up to many years.

“There will be no shortcuts to entering the EU,” Scholz said, adding that it would not be fair to the countries of the Western Balkans who had been waiting to join the bloc all along. for years.

Reacting to the German Chancellor’s statement, Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba wrote on Twitter on the same day: “Strategic ambiguity over Ukraine’s European outlook, practiced by several EU countries in In recent years, it has failed and must be stopped.”

Mr Kuleba also said that Ukraine’s “treatment like a second-class country” had “damaged the feelings” of its people towards the EU.

In April, European Commission (EC) President Ursula von der Leyen visited Kiev and handed a questionnaire to assess Ukraine’s readiness to join the EU to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

The Ukrainian side then completed the questionnaire and returned it to the EC. Zelensky said at the time that this was a step that would help Ukraine achieve EU membership “in just a few weeks”.

However, many EU countries say they would rather focus on providing practical assistance to Ukraine and ending the conflict, rather than embarking on a process that could take at least a decade. To join the EU, a country must go through a lengthy evaluation process, and must receive the consensus of all 27 member countries.

Vietnamese-English