The European Commission has recommended that formal talks should begin with Ukraine on joining the European Union.
The step takes Kyiv closer to the coveted prize of EU membership, five months after the 27 member states gave it candidate status.
Commission chief, Ursula von der Leyen, praised its “excellent progress, even as it’s fighting an existential war.”
She said talks should also start with Moldova and that Georgia should become a candidate, if it passed reforms.
Moldova and Ukraine applied for membership in the weeks after Russia invaded Ukraine and both became candidates in June. Georgia was passed over for candidate status at the time.
President Volodymyr Zelensky described the European Commission report as “historic” and said it was an important day.
Ms von der Leyen said Ukraine had completed “well over 90% of the necessary reforms” that the EU set out last year, adding that “the goal is truly within reach”.
It was also a day to celebrate in Georgia, she said. The government in Tbilisi is seen as having made sufficient progress on gender equality, fighting violence against women and organised crime.
A final decision on the recommendations will be made by the EU’s member states at their December summit.
But the devil to reaching the goal of membership is in the detail.
EU accession talks are a slalom of technicalities and caveats and they tend to be painstakingly slow. Candidate countries need to meet extensive legal and economic criteria to join.
Just because you are granted candidate status, it doesn’t mean you will join the EU tomorrow,” said an EU diplomat.
The entire process normally takes about a decade, but can take longer than that.
“The Western Balkans are the best example of how slow, tricky and inefficient the process can be,” said Tina Akhvlediani of the Centre for European Policy Studies.
Each enlargement decision requires the backing of all 27 EU members, and any country can block negotiations at any stage, often due to bilateral disputes.
“It can be because of ethnic identities, cultural differences, even the name of the country. Greece demanded that Macedonia change its name to North Macedonia,” said Ms Akhvlediani.
“Ukraine has had massive issues with corruption, and it needs to do more to carry out judicial reform – which is relatively fundamental stuff,” said Tina Akhvlediani.
But there is a certain leniency, considering that Ukraine is in the middle of a war. —BBC
