A “complete consensus” is emerging among the 27 member states of the European Union to offer Ukraine candidate membership of the EU. This is what the French Minister of European Affairs Clément Beaune said after an EU Council of Ministers in Luxembourg. The formal decision on the status to be awarded to Kiev will fall at the European summit on Thursday.
It was the European Commission last Friday that formally recommended offering both Ukraine and Moldova a European perspective and granting them candidate membership, provided both countries implement a number of reforms. Georgia should also be given such a perspective, but for that country candidate membership comes too early, according to the Commission.
The decision falls on the European summit of heads of state and government, which will start in Brussels in two days. At a preparatory council of ministers, French minister and president Clément Beaune noted today that there is “complete consensus” among the EU27 to give Ukraine a prospect of membership.
The discussion “has demonstrated the existence of a great consensus, I would even dare to say a complete consensus, especially on Ukraine,” Beaune said afterwards. The country should be able to become a candidate country for the EU “in the best possible time,” he said.
Beaune pointed out that such a statute does not mean that Ukraine immediately becomes an effective member state of the EU. “Precisely because the process is demanding and long, we also have to think about additional elements – not alternatives. It is in this spirit that in recent weeks the president (Emmanuel Macron, ed.) has pushed forward the formation of a European political community.”
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