Italian Prime Minister: Key EU countries oppose Ukraine’s candidacy

On May 31, Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi revealed that only Italy supported the granting of Ukraine candidacy in the EU, while all other key member states in the union objected.

“Almost all of the key EU member states are opposed to giving Ukraine a candidate – except Italy. Kiev’s candidacy status is currently unpredictable due to the opposition of these countries,” Prime Minister Draghi said at a press conference in Brussels, in response to a question from Italian news agency ANSA.

Draghi added that he thinks the European Commission will present a plan to speed up the consideration of Ukraine’s future candidacy at a meeting in June.

Prime minister Italia note, most countries have had to wait years to become a candidate, let alone become an EU member, and the EU has proposed many other arrangements to appease Kiev, but none have been found. agreement accepted by the Ukrainian government.

Ukraine applied to join the EU on February 28, four days after the outbreak of conflict with Russia. The European Council “recognized Ukraine’s European aspirations and choice” in March and said it had promptly turned over Kiev’s paperwork to the European Commission.

At the beginning of May, Russia declared not to accept Ukraine’s membership of the EU, similar to not accepting Kiev’s accession to NATO.

Since Russia launched its military operation in Ukraine, it is recommended that Ukraine’s accession to the EU has become one of the issues of concern to EU countries. The question of whether to grant the country candidate status – a crucial first step on the long and winding road to EU membership – is expected to be on the leaders’ agenda. member states before the end of France’s term as EU Presidency on July 1.

But so far, there is little consensus on what Ukraine’s first step should look like. President Volodymyr Zelensky even went so far as to say that Ukraine “does not need alternatives to run for election to the EU”.

“We don’t need to compromise,” Zelensky told reporters in Kiev during a joint press conference with Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Costa during a visit last week.

Opinions against and in favor of Ukraine vary widely from country to country and change over time. According to EURACTIV, so far, only eight EU countries have unconditionally supported Ukraine’s candidacy in the near future, including: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Czech, Slovakia, Italy and Bulgaria .

Countries hesitant to support Ukraine’s candidacy include: Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, Ireland, France, Spain, Portugal, Austria, Croatia , Romania, Greece, Cyprus. Some of these countries are hesitant to wait for a review by the European Commission. For example, Ireland has expressed strong support for Ukraine’s grant of EU candidate status but is still awaiting the European Commission’s opinion, so it should be marked as “hesitant” by EURACTIV.

Meanwhile, a number of other countries, such as Slovenia and Hungary, have all expressed support for the granting of candidate status to Ukraine as soon as possible at the beginning of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict. However, after elections changed the government in Slovenia and increasingly strained relations between Hungary and Ukraine, the current position of these two countries is not clear.