Lawfare Daily: A Breakthrough in Ukraine’s EU Accession Talks

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It's as beneficial, if not more, for the country joining than it is for the EU. But because of this new reality that we're in, the EU is proactively pushing things so long. This has never happened. It's always been, if they want to join, they'll do the work. If they don't, okay, that's their problem. This is really a different time that we're in. It's the Lawfare podcast. I'm Anastasia Lepatina, Ukraine fellow at Lawfare, with Chris Powers, the Brussels correspondent at the KU. Independent. Those reasons that make Ukraine exciting or interesting

also can threaten certain communities in the EU as it exists now. And agriculture is the most prominent one, simply because Ukraine's sector is so massive compared to anything that exists in the EU. Ukraine is feeding half the Middle East, and the EU can't make that claim. Chris and I discuss the recent progress in Ukraine's bid to join the European Union, and the many political dramas that surround that process, both in Kiev and in Europe. Chris, I know you're sitting in kind of an interesting spot. It's the EU Council building, Tell us about where you are and why you're there. Yeah, so hello from Brussels, capital of Belgium, capital of the EU.

And I am sitting, yeah, in the building of the European Council, which is where the leaders of all the EU countries meet every so often to decide what the EU's policy should be. So they very helpfully have a nice spot for journalists and press, and I've occupied the podcast studio there today. Awesome. You've recently joined the KUM Independent as, Brussels correspondent. So you write about all things. EU integration, EU-Ukraine relations,

and that's what we're going to talk about today. So around a week ago, the EU said that it will open the first cluster of accession talks with Ukraine on June 15th. And I immediately texted you kind of asking, is this anything of substance? Is this important? And you said this was genuinely important. So tell us why. And also, what is even a cluster and what does all of this mean in practice? These are all good questions. And it's also perfectly fine to not know what something is because with all EU processes, they're complicated. They're complicated for good reasons, but they are, yeah, if you're on the outside, it's difficult to understand. So, you know, Ukraine's applied for membership of the EU four years ago. And for the last year or so, progress has been

blocked on the next step. And that next step is to open the first of these six so-called enlargement clusters. What is a cluster? It's a collection of different policies, to-do lists, that Ukraine has to fulfill in order to eventually become a member of the EU. So this first cluster, which opens, it means that on topics like rule of law, democracy, how the institutions function in Ukraine, there will be a clear to-do list provided against which we can see the progress, against which Ukraine can measure its own progress, and yeah, keep going forward to eventually become a country in the EU. So you've mentioned that Ukraine applied for membership

became a candidate country only four years ago, which may come a little bit of a surprise to some people because, of course, there was the revolution of dignity in Ukraine in 2014, also in know as Euro-Mydon, and that happened for a variety of reasons, among them corruption, the government's relations with Russia. But what really sparked it was the then-President of Ukrainianukovych and his refusal to sign an association agreement with the EU. And, you know, all of these events, the revolution was really about the Ukrainian society wanting to be closer with EU, wanting to become a part of the European Union and the government not being willing to do that under Russian pressure.

And so Ukraine nevertheless applied only eight years later after the evolution. Why did it take so long? Why was there a sort of eight year gap? And then also I know that after Ukraine applied in 2022, actually, I think it was something like the third or fourth day of Russia's full-scale invasion. Its status was confirmed as a candidate country status a few months later. Is that significant? Yeah.

So I think it's all significant. and to understand why it took so long, there's a lot of history behind it, and there's, there's factors on both the Ukrainian side and then also on the European side. So, so on the Ukrainian side, bluntly, they haven't been ready until quite recently to, to even apply. Yeah, to be, to be like credible as a candidate country, because the issues around corruption, which we often dramatize in Brussels, they are still nonetheless there in Ukraine, and there is a lot of reform work that's been done since and has had to be done in all.

for the candidacy to be a credible one, for it to be sufficiently aligned with the EU that this can actually go somewhere. But on the European side, there's also other factors that are nothing to do with Ukraine that nonetheless have an effect. So we talk about the last enlargements that happened in the early 2000s. So there was a big bang in 2004 where countries like Poland, Romania, Bulgaria joined. And with them came a huge wave of economic migration from east to west in Europe. And this migration was economically very good and I enjoyed meeting Polish people in the UK where I'm from. But it did create a backlash, especially right-wing tabloid media and kind of no more reaction. We need to digest this wave of enlargement. We need to

figure out how we deal with free movement of people because this is too destabilizing. I don't agree that it was destabilizing, but a million plus Polish people going to the UK alone, it was a bigger a big story and was noticeable. So basically what that meant is the EU ruled out further enlargements after Croatia joined in 2013. That was the then president of the commission, Jean-Claude Juncker. He said no more. And he only finished work in 2019. So that was already a six-year period that covers when Ukraine held the Maidan in 2014,

signed the association agreement, kind of had other agreements with the EU. But membership, it was seen as not happening for anybody. afterwards. Then, just to tie this off, the EU also had to deal with Brexit, which is not necessarily relevant for Ukraine, but it was the first time a country left the EU. And that was a big question. They were having an existential crisis. Does the EU have a future? How do we manage this? Occupied a lot of time of the people who might otherwise be helping countries to join. And then that was followed by COVID. And then once COVID was out the way, we immediately had this full-scale invasion. And at that point, really, the EU woke up.

that we need to do enlargement to actually protect ourselves, but also to really give these countries some kind of stability and future perspective. And I think that's why the EU is able to move so relatively quickly once Ukraine put in the membership application. And just to say, a membership application is not a big logistical deal. It's literally just, I want to join, hey, what do you think? And then we say, good idea. Let's start the huge mountain of work now to make that happen.

So it was very much a low-hanging fruit for the EU in that moment, just a few months after the full-scale invasion. Exactly. Yeah, it's really a political statement that Ukraine's place and Moldovas as well is in Europe will help. I'm glad you mentioned Moldova because Moldova's EU bid kind of goes hand in hand with Ukrainians. Can you explain that? They're kind of treated as a, you know, as a twix, as I say, that either both of them get admitted at the same time or neither do. Why is it that way? Yeah. I mean, what I should say is the kind of new mojo in enlargement discussions in the EU is entirely thanks to, well, thanks to Vladimir Putin, essentially.

The invasion of Ukraine is the thing that gave it new impetus. Moldova was another one of these countries that was thinking of applying, but struggling. It was mired in a bad reputation around corruption. There's this occupied territory there where there's even now Russian soldiers sitting there, which makes the prospect of this country joining the EU quite sky. Gary, if you think to the before full-scale invasion times. So when it came to Ukraine joining, it was really a discussion of, okay, we need to deal with Russia as a whole. This whole neighborhood is clearly at risk. And so that's why the EU was very warm to not just Moldova, but also

Georgia, and granting them candidate status. Georgia has since regressed. They've got a problematic government, let's say, pro-Russian, not really helpful, very much not aligned with the people in the streets every night. But Moldova hasn't well. Ladova's got a pro-European government in place. It's doing the reforms. And yes, the idea was that you put it with Ukraine, they kind of riff off each other a bit, help each other along. It means that Moldova doesn't fall through the cracks. As a small country, people kind of forget exists. Sorry to say, because it's a very nice country with good wine. But now it might even help in the other direction because Ukraine's struggling a bit with some of these reforms where Moldova is not. And so actually there's pressure

to keep up the pace so that Moldova isn't struggling either. Maybe it helps both of them. All right. So to take stock of the current situation, Ukraine has a candidate status. The first cluster will be open on June 15th. And that's when Ukraine will get its first, as you said, official to do list of these are the reforms that you have to pass in order to join the EU. But But for the past, you know, more than a decade, around 10 years, Ukraine has been passing a bunch of reforms that have been pushed by the European Union. Some of them extremely significant for domestic Ukrainian politics, you know, the establishment of the anti-corruption infrastructure in Ukraine. That's all of these new independent bodies, the National Anti-Corruption Bureau, the special prosecutor's office, the high anti-corruption court. all of that is very much perceived in Ukrainian and credited to the revolution and the pressure

from Ukraine's international partners. And, you know, it's perceived as part of Ukraine's pro-EU reforms. So my question is, what was all of that? If none of those reforms were part of this official accession track, how did that come about? What were, what was the relationship in this sort of eight-year period before Russia's full-scale invasion after the revolution and before the invasion? I think what we've also got to always bear in mind with these discussions is that when we talk about EU reforms, people often think of, okay, this EU is a bureaucratic beast, this stuff isn't necessary and so on. I would really push against that. I know you haven't said that, but really these reforms that are being done, they are kind of a roadmap on how to be in a world-leading country. It's very open for a world business that people can trust and work with. And so countries also tend to want to join in order to be associated with that kind of positive branding, let's say. And that's no different for Ukraine. If Ukraine's able to pass all of these reforms on corruption and rule of law, businesses want to go there. They trust that procurement processes are going to be fair and so on. It's in there. It's in,

it's in the country's interests to do so as well. But that work, also with enlargement and EU membership in mind, it's not for nothing. It's all very relevant preparatory work, which is essential in order for these discussions to happen in the first place. And there will probably be some overlap between the work that's been done, especially in the last couple of years and the formal criteria that are being established now. So it's really, it is aligned. It's just that there was a lot that Ukraine had to do. So yeah, this process takes time. Can you also talk about some of the other documents that Ukraine and the EU have been signing in some of the programs through which these reforms have been pushed that,

although we're not part of the official candidacy and accession negotiations, what were all of these various documents about. Yeah. So some of them have been designed to try and create more intimacy or familiarity, let's say, between the EU and Ukraine. So there's been work done to make the visa process easier for Ukrainians wanting to visit or study or go around Europe. That's the visa liberalization action plan. Exactly. So that was a bunch of reforms that Ukraine had to pass in order to get a visa-free regime within the Schengen area. As a Ukrainian, I can confirm that this was truly revolutionary to not have to go through the visa application process and be able to travel freely in the EU. Yeah. And then there's also some fun perks as well, like opening up

this mobile roaming space. So you can literally use your mobile phone across Europe in the same conditions as other Europeans. It's a small thing, but it is a win. And especially now that you've got millions of Ukrainians living in the EU, it's an important to give. And then I guess the biggest is around the broader trade and the association agreement between Ukraine and the EU. That was the document that was signed after Maidan. It's the document that Yanukovych refused to sign and caused the whole explosion in the first place. That was supplemented by a deep and comprehensive free trade agreement, which has since been updated, I think last year recently. These two documents together, they basically form still the basis of the relationship between the EU and Ukraine. Their

aim was like two aims. One is to kind of reduce barriers to trade between the two areas. This is important for Ukraine because over two thirds of Ukraine's trade is with the EU, so by far the largest partner. But it also includes like alignment of standards, which again is like some of this preparatory work that's going to have to be done to become a member. So an association agreement is not membership at all and it predated the membership application, but you kind of need to have it in order for that to move forward. And we can see that now in a different context with Armenia, where they are starting these steps to align their economic structure so they can do more business with the EU. And then from there, maybe at some point, they also apply to

be a member. I think because of the bureaucratic nature of all of these negotiations and all of these processes, this whole topic of Ukraine's EU session can be perceived as quite boring. And I admit, for many years, I thought so too, just because it seemed like there was so little tangible progress. but especially in the past several years now that there is real momentum behind Ukraine's bid and the EU narrative is very open and extremely supportive of Ukraine actually genuinely becoming a member in some sort of short to medium term timeline. There is actually a lot of drama happening that is very interesting to unpack and a lot of political drama both in Brussels and other European capitalists and in Kyiv.

And I want us to go through some of those dynamics. And I want to start with the veto issue. You've mentioned that the opening, the opening of the first cluster of negotiations was vetoed for more than a year by Hungary. I think our listeners probably have heard a lot about this. And, you know, Viktor Orban, very much Vladimir Putin's friend in Europe, spoiling the negotiations and blocking EU aid to Ukraine, blocking a lot of processes. and I want to talk a bit about this.

Can you just give a basic explanation of how EU voting actually works? More specifically, is unanimity always required basically for everything? Yeah. So I should say if we were talking about almost any topic other than ones that touch Ukraine, then unanimity is not the way it has to be. They can agree things by majorities. It's not like the EU is paralyzed all the time. but yes, on these topics of EU membership and also sanctions, which comes up a lot with Ukraine,

unanimity is required. And this is where, yeah, small countries can hold the whole thing hostage to whatever wishes they have. And yeah, for the last year or so, the main protagonist, the main user of that power has been Hungary. It's been Viktor Orban. So I think he's a bit of a friend to part of the American political spectrum now, which for a European is always a bit weird because he's also a friend to Russia, but okay, that's the world we're in now. So, sure of the times. Yeah. And so with Viktor Orban, he has blocked a lot of relevant things for Ukraine. First of all, membership talks for over a year. Second of all, he held back the 90 billion euro loan

judicial responsibility for people who speak the same language but for whom you are not their government which is also something the Russians claim to do of course protecting Russian speakers everywhere in the world exactly they do this a lot so it's problematic but the grain of truth let's say

is that Ukraine has passed laws to prioritize Ukrainian with Russian language in mind not with Hungarian there's fewer than 100,000 people in Ukraine as being Hungarian out of like 43 million before the full-scale invasion. So this is really small numbers. They were forgotten about and now there's a discussion about how to make sure they can keep, you know, practicing their cultural rights, like access to Hungarian education, local politics,

participation and so on. So with that, the new government took it forward as well under Peter Maggiar, who's also on the right of the political spectrum, but believes in Europe more and working together, whereas Viktor Orban was just veto, veto, veto. And yeah, they found an agreement, which means the veto is now dropped and Ukraine can proceed. How has the EU tried to kind of work around these vetoes from Viktor Orban? I mean, I remember there was, I don't remember what exact voting this was, but I remember some story about how Viktor Orban was just, you know, they've negotiated that he will just leave the room and the voting will proceed without him.

But what was that? Yeah, there's a whole range of these. strange maneuvers that can work. So that was around, I think, one of the sanctions packages, which, again, you know, it's sanctioning Russia, but it's ultimately in support of Ukraine. Sanctions require unanimity. So, but you can kind of abstain. So, yeah, he went, literally was told to go to the toilet by then German Chancellor Schultz. And he did. And then they agreed while he was out of the room. So it means he politically doesn't say, I supported these sanctions, but it means they can still go ahead nonetheless.

There's been a few different things like this. On enlargement, specifically, the EU has basically taken what it assumes will be the criteria once these clusters open and present those informally to Ukraine and already start the work of reforming them, make Passanese reforms. So if you think about the stuff that Ukraine's parliament's been doing in the last six months, that's really been addressing the criteria of EU membership, even though formerly, legally speaking, they're not ready to do that yet. Right, because the official opening of the cluster of negotiations, that requires unanimity, right?

Exactly. But from the commission side, they understood they cannot just leave this country languishing for a year, waiting for Viktor Orban to lose an election. So they were like, okay, let's keep moving so that they're ready, beyond ready, when that time comes. Right. So this, I think you're referring to the Kachka-Koss Plan, which is this plan that's how it's referred to in the Ukrainian media. And it's this interesting document that was signed by the EU Commissioner for Enlargement,

Marda Koss, and Ukraine's deputy prime minister, who is also the highest official responsible for EU integration of Ukraine, Taras Kachka. They had a meeting in Lviv, I believe, in the west of Ukraine in December of 2025. And they signed together the statement where Ukraine pledged to pass 10 key reforms, or there were a bunch of reforms within like 10 key reform priorities. And Ukraine pledged to pass all of them by the end of this year, so by 2026. And I understand this was kind of, as you've said, a workaround, you know, we can't open the official cluster of negotiations, but we can sign, you know, this kind of memorandum, the statement that's not really the same official. kind of document, but it will give Ukraine something to work towards to. And there are forms that were in this kind of vague statement. They're the same reforms as the Cluster 1 reforms. Is that right?

Exactly. It might not be everything that's in Cluster 1 because this is really the biggest of the six clusters and there will be a lot there, but it's the main thrust of it. And maybe just to say with this Kachka-Kosbchkhan, the other aspect of the Commission's thinking is they are seeing what's happening in Ukraine where the parliament is exhausted. There hasn't been able to be an election for a long time. MPs are regularly not turning up for votes. So it means that if Volodymyr Zelensky says, I agree, let's do this, it doesn't mean it happens anymore. It's really a struggle. And so the European Commission is trying to think of ways to kind of carried and stick the way through the reform process from outside. And that's meant sending this like serious memo between the two sides,

it's meant attaching conditions to Ukraine's funding support from the EU. These aren't like conditions that are gratuitous. They're really just supporting the reforms that the IMF wants and the accession criteria of the EU. So it's kind of just another layer of another incentive to get on with that work. And even this week, Marta Koss was in Kiev meeting with politicians. And she said there, if you don't pass like a specific reform in the next week or so, then you're going to lose like 300 million euros. And so this is like how active the commission is being there,

literally going to Ukraine, saying to the parliament, please do your homework so we can give you your money. It was a bit of a remarkable visit. Yeah, I think she met with a bunch of people from the Ukrainian parliament with sort of different factions, the governing coalition and the opposition, and outright ask them to like, okay, guys, please, whatever conflict you have between each other,

between you, the parliament as a whole, and Volodymyr Zelensky, of which I'll mention, of which there are a lot of conflicts there. I'll mention this later in the episode. Please put all of this behind yourself because this is ultimately about Ukraine's future. This is not, you know, not to say that it's not a political issue,

but it shouldn't be, it shouldn't be, that Ukraine's EU accession process shouldn't be a debate here. It's what all of you should be agreeing on because, in fact, it is in Ukraine's constitution, right? after the Revolution of Dignity in 2014, Ukraine enshrined in its constitution the country's desire to join NATO and the European Union. I should also say this is level of engagement is totally unprecedented. The EU has enlarged several times.

Lots of countries have joined. And each time, and I think it's true now as well. It's as beneficial, if not more, for the country joining than it is for the EU. But because of this new reality that we're in, the EU is proactively pushing things along. This has never happened. It's always been, if they want to join, they'll do the work. If they don't, okay, that's their problem. This is really a different time that we're in.

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Because with every item purchased, another is donated. Bombas, comfort worth calling for. Go to bambas.com and use code audio for 20% off your first purchase. That's bom, bas.com, and use code audio. We are moving away from my topic list here, but I still want to talk a bit more about this. sort of EU diplomats engaging with Ukraine. You say the level of engagement is unprecedented, and I agree. But at the same time, I know that the Ukrainian society, since Russia's full-scale invasion,

has been critical of Ukraine's partners, both in the EU and the U.S., although the situation with the U.S. is dramatically more complicated in the past year. But the Ukrainian civil society has been critical of the EU being a, kind of less bold than it usually would be in criticizing the Ukrainian government, in pushing for several reforms. And I've seen a fair amount of reporting about how Ukraine's reforms have been stalling during the war, in part because the EU pressure has decreased. And you've also recently wrote a piece for the Kim independent that I thought was very interesting, with a provocative title about something like, why nobody in the country.

Brussels is answering my Ukraine-related questions. Can you talk a little bit about that? And I mean, I know you're very much in the weeds of all of these things in Brussels. How are the EU diplomats that you're speaking with thinking about this issue of, OK, we have to pressure Ukraine to move along? So it's a classic one of these situations where good intentions don't always make good results. So important to notice that there are different EU institutions and they have different levels of knowledge about how Ukraine works. So in the European Commission, which, I think really is the executive body of the EU and it's the one that's really driving this enlargement progress of Ukraine.

They're taking an approach of pick your battles with Ukraine domestic issues. So for example, there was this push to pass a civil code a couple of months back or a few weeks back, which contains some super aggressive stuff on gay rights. In an earlier draft, there was something about marriage age being lowered children. And this is all super against EU law, immediately not the way to go. So my normal job as a reporter then is to ask, okay, what's your reaction to this crazy thing I'm reading about? And in this, they don't want to talk about it. And it's because it's a bit early.

They'd rather deal with the crisis when it comes. If they comment on everything, maybe their comments lose this power that they previously had. So that's one way of self-censoring. But more interesting has been that people don't necessarily know everything that's going on. So because Ukraine's political spectrum is very different than that of most European countries, simply because Volodymyr Zelensky won this massive majority with a comedian TV show-led party instead of like a usual social democrat, center-right, liberal, green kind of mix. It means that people don't necessarily know who to talk to on the other side to even learn about

these things. And then when they do, they're worried about coming too harsh on the criticism because maybe it makes people in their electorate back in the EU, think Ukraine's not credible and that makes approval of the accession harder later, but also of helping Russian narratives and so on. It's also in Russia's interests to have Ukraine described as this hopelessly corrupt country that can never move forward and create this divide between Ukraine and the EU. So they don't want to contribute to that, but it does mean that they pull their punches where I think sometimes they probably should speak out because Ukrainians need to hear this and know where

their government is also falling short. Right. I, you know, both as a journalist and analyst and also as a Ukrainian, think that Ukraine's international partners have probably the biggest amount of leverage on the Ukrainian government right now. Because Ukraine can't hold elections during wartime, I've written about this for lawfare explaining why, you know, the security considerations are so, so important and why it's defauch. to impossible to hold either presidential or parliamentary elections. Because there is no kind of clean path towards accountability for the Ukrainian government, the Ukrainian city can't vote Volodymyr Zelensky

out, can't vote the parliament out. Really, the people who have the biggest amount of influence, I think, are the partners because they are financing a huge, huge part of Ukraine's budget. something like half of Ukraine's budget, if not more, is, you know, European money. And I think that matters and has a huge impact. And I've spoken with many people in Ukraine, activists, lawyers, journalists, who say that because, you know, of this desire to not play into Russian narratives, to sort of rally around Volodymyr Zelensky in this critical moment in the middle of a war, because the EU countries have been shying away from open and more harsher criticism,

it has given a window of opportunity to the Ukrainian government to do a lot of stuff that it shouldn't do. And, you know, an example of this was, of course, one of many, but perhaps the most dramatic one, was the Ukrainian government's attempt to take away the independence from several anti-corruption buddies last summer in the summer of 2025. it was a very brazen attack on the anti-corruption infrastructure. I also have, of course, written about this for lawfare and did podcasts on this subject. And I've just recently, actually this week, have had conversations with some of the sort of people from the anti-corruption civil society bubble in Ukraine.

And they've said that the EU reaction to that, you know, to when this controversial bill that would take away the dependence of these bodies first appeared, the reaction from the EU was really slow. And it took, you know, because of course this bill provoked the first countrywide protests in Ukraine since 2022, the first massive protests. Only when people were in the streets, you know, near the president's office. Only when it became a huge thing in Western media as well. Only then did European diplomats kind of wake up and started applying pressure. But people in Ukraine argue that that reaction was slow. And Volodymyr Zelensky and his immediate circle, you know, your mock, his former chief of staff,

who's since been fired, probably batted on the fact that, you know, oh, well, nobody's going to criticize us. Nobody's going to pressure us because, you know, we're a heroic country fighting for its existence, which is true. My Ukrainian head on, I do think that part of it is true, but it is also true that, yeah, because the pressure has been lowered and the Ukrainian government has. started to think that he can get away with things. Yeah, I think I think that's completely right. It's hard for the EU as well, though, because they don't know who they can work with other than Volodymyr Zelensky, for the reasons you said, there's no, there's no election anytime soon,

and the EU can't always easily work directly with the Ukrainian people. So if you push Volodymyr Zelensky too much into a corner, does that risk backfiring at some point? I can understand the concerns, but indeed what you're saying, this, you know, too little too late kind of thing. It's the risk that you run by being so cautious. And yeah, it's happened a few times now. Okay. I want to move back to some of the more international drama around Ukraine's accession. And I want to talk about a little bit about the economic dimension of Ukraine's accession to the EU and some anxiety in states like Poland about the future of Ukraine's accession. Can you talk to me a little bit about how some of these countries that border Ukraine in the European Union are reacting to.

to the fact that, yeah, this is actually now a real prospect that Ukraine can join the European Union and why some of these countries are less than extremely into the ASTIC. Yeah, I think this is where we get to the bit where people become genuinely excited about the drama of EU enlargement discussions because I'm all for these reforms and getting into the details, but really it's about how the EU countries respond that's going to shape the speed and success of this process. Ukraine joining the EU is a huge opportunity for the EU. It's another 40 million people. It's a agricultural superpower on the world stage. It is sending a clear geopolitical message to Russia and to

anyone else who wants to mess that this is not the way to do things anymore if we can all pull it off. That is clear. However, those reasons that make Ukraine exciting or interesting also can threaten certain communities in the EU as it exists now. Agriculture is the most prominent one, simply because Ukraine's sector is so massive compared to anything that exists in the EU. Ukraine is feeding half the Middle East, and you can't make that claim. What that means is if you put Ukrainian agriculture in the same pot as Polish farmers and French farmers, they're going to be out-competed with. Ukraine's farms are bigger.

They are more efficient. They are cheaper. And so these farmers are all terrified they're going to lose their way of life and their job. And it's also not going to be an easy thing to solve. So, you know, how do you tell Ukraine to make your agricultural sector worse? And why would you ever do that? You wouldn't. So you've kind of then got to address this problem within the EU itself

about how to absorb something that's fundamentally different. And there's money at stake. The biggest part of EU funding until very recently was the Common Agricultural Policy, a subsidy program for farmers across Europe. It's still there. and it gives money based basically just on how much land you have and a little bit on an environmental criteria. This, if you ignore Ukraine for a second, this is also problematic for the future because you're not,

you're not subsidizing innovation and precision farming, using technology and, yeah, kind of improving your yields with the little land you have. And this is all stuff again where Ukraine is kept ahead. And so this pot of money, we have to figure out how it's going to change anyway, but with Ukraine joining the EU, it becomes a very pressing topic. And I think that Poland's been blocking progress on a specific one of these six clusters around agriculture. It's for now lifted those concerns, is what I heard, but it will be back for sure. Farmers like to protest, spread poo everywhere on the streets. You know, this will keep coming back. And it's not just

farming. There's an industry around truck drivers that the Poland's afraid of. Anything where Ukraine's got a big cost advantage, there's going to be questions. Do you worry about the political dynamics in each of the EU states, you know, in the next however many years, as in governments becoming more to the right, you know, some of the far-right parties coming into power and perhaps being, you know, skeptical of Ukraine joining the EU? Because, of course, am I right on understanding that every country. the EU has to hold its own national vote, whether to, or at least ratify whether a different country can join the block. Is that right? It's kind of right. So every country has to ratify

Ukraine joining and then they all do it in different ways. So some countries, it's just a vote in parliament. Most of them it is. But an increasing number are doing referendums on this, which then becomes a whole another level problem where non-relevant issues get thrown into the mix. You don't how the reaction is going to be. So do you worry about this sort of, you know, right-leaning wave of politicians in the EU? Or maybe, on the other hand, realistically, Ukraine is actually going to be able to join at least in like a decade? I mean, some people throw away different numbers, but at least a decade.

So it's kind of too early to worry about the politics. I worry about the politics, but not necessarily because of right wing shifts, to be honest. The right wing is a fascinating beast right now, and we're seeing some that are just genuinely crazy, like the AFD in Germany, which is really against Ukraine, very pro-Russian party. But you've also got Giorgia Meloni in Italy, where everyone was afraid that she would be a big problem. Italy is probably the most Ukraine-sceptic EU country among the public, and yet her government has been consistently supporting sending defense aid, not raising objections on any of these votes.

So it's really about each of these parties and how they wish to engage with that wider network. France is the country people talk about a lot at the moment because they have the presidential election next year. And there's a worry that they will end up with a runoff between a very far right candidate, Jim Jordan Bardela, who comes from the Rassamplement Nacional. So this is inherited from an anti-Semitic past and Nazi collaborators, let's say. he's probably going to be pitched the way things are against essentially a communist, Jean-Méant-on who is against NATO, he's against the EU, he's against Ukraine, and then in that vote, who do you pick?

And honestly, if you're thinking about it with a Ukraine lens, the far-right candidates is more realistic because he's toning down his discourse, he's saying he can work with Germany, his MEPs, the members of the European Parliament from his party, they are often saying very sensible things about defence, policy and Ukraine. So you've really got to take people one by one, a question if they're going to speak, do what they say now. But I am worried. I'm also worried about countries that think they're going to have to pay a lot of money to kind of subsidize Ukraine so it can catch up. That will come up as a problem later down the road. I'm worried about historical grievances

coming up. Poland has one of these right now. Every neighboring country of Ukraine is going to have them. The whole point of EU accession is it's supposed to be a rejection. of this history and build something new and nice together. But once the countries have a say in this and they have their own domestic politics, especially on the EU's eastern flank, history and politics just go together, whereas in like a Germany or a Belgium, this just isn't the case. And so I have a lot of worries that could slow this process down. Was this also the case for other countries that were joining the EU?

Like were there a lot of grievances, economic or historical about, say, Poland or some other country. So not so much because that wave of 2004 where most of Central Europe joined, it was in the context of the post-Cold War. So it was a big celebration and the reunification of Europe. I think what's also important is there was a potential for a fight between Poland and Germany over the border because they had it shifted after the Second World War, thanks to the Soviet Union. But Poland immediately on becoming independent said, these are our borders, we don't wish to change them. Germany accepted this and the neighboring countries too. So there was an effort on both sides to kind of forget the past. With Ukraine, I think that's not as clean cuts. And I'm not sure if it's deliberate or if it's a mistake.

But this decision of Volodymyr Zelensky to name a military regiment after a World War II force, sure, if they're heroic in Ukraine, that's great. But if they also commit ethnic cleansing against Poles, who are obsessed with their history, yes, you're going to get a reaction. And yes, I could have told that in advance. Yes, this is the Volodymyr Zelensky's signing of a decree that named an elite Ukrainian Special Operations Unit after the heroes of the Upa, Upa in Ukrainian being the Ukrainian insurgent army. It's this very important in Ukrainian history unit that fought against the Soviets during World War II. And they're seen in Ukraine mainly through the lens of, okay, these were the heroes of Ukraine fighting for Ukraine's independence, fighting to preserve or to create and preserve a Ukrainian

nation state. And in the process of doing that, they did kill tens of thousands of Poles who were on Ukrainian territory at the time. And the Poles in retaliation killed many thousands of Ukrainians as well. So there was a lot of violence on both sides. And the Ukrainian, you know, sort of historic community, civil society kind of makes the argument. that like, okay, let's look at it this way. Let's look at it as both of us committed horrible things. Let's say sorry and forgive each other and do, you know, whatever public memory things you want in each of the respective countries.

But let's move on and accept that both of us made mistakes. And on the Polish side, it really does seem quite one-sided this debate. The polls just, I mean, I think some of them, some of the official scholars call this genocide and used really harsh terms for what happened there. And yeah, Volodymyr Zelensky agreeing to name this unit after the Heroes of the Upa sparked immense outrage in Poland, some officials, which is interesting that it caused outrage on basically on all sides of the, almost on all sides of the spectrum and of the government, like both the president and the prime minister, who definitely do not see eye to eye on almost anything, they've both

criticized Volodymyr Zelensky over this. So, yeah, the historical memory is going to continue being an issue. I think with Hungary too as well, with Magarra, you've mentioned that. He's definitely not like Viktor Orban, you know, vis-à-vis Russia, vis-vis some of the corruption stuff, but he's definitely a right-leaning figure. And he's going to care about Hungarian nationalism and Hungarian history as well. Yeah. Maybe just to come in quickly and say, I think with this,

with this particular enlargement process, there's good and bad signs. So there's good signs in the sense of like after the Cold War, there's this geopolitical moment of urgency, which everyone understands, and now is the time to bring Ukraine in. That is clear, and that is a consensus. Also Poland agrees with this. But you do have these same countervailing forces at the same time, and there are precedents for the EU kind of slow walking on including new countries over these objections. Actually, the most relevant one is when the UK tried to join. They had to wait for, they tried to join in the 60s. France said no, because they were afraid of the UK changing everything and they'd lose their control. It's only 12 years later they could join. 50 years after that,

they leave again. So I don't know what you make of that. But all that's to say, these things can be held back. They can also move forward very fast. And it really depends a bit also on how Ukraine will handle these objections and if they can find agreements. Before we wrap I want to talk about Germany and this proposal by Germany's chancellor, Friedrich Merz, of something he called associate membership for Ukraine. Can you talk about the crux of this proposal and how it came about? Yeah. So the proposal is not brand new, although he did send the letter only recently.

He talked about it already with EU leaders back in April. The idea is to give Ukraine, and not only Ukraine, but also my own. Moldova, also Western Balkans, some kind of benefits of EU membership without them being an EU member as things are moving too slow. And everyone agrees the EU accession process is too bureaucratic too long. So he's trying to cut through that. But he does it in a way where he doesn't always properly consult with others on the precise wording and the timing of these things. So, yeah, this associate membership suggestion, it's created a problem. because it suggests like a second tier short of full membership.

And this is why Volodymyr Zelensky has been very quick to say, absolutely not. We go for full membership or nothing. Several EU countries also came out with the same criticism that we don't have the time to mess around with these ideas. We have to just get on with Ukraine joining. I will say in his defense, I think that that bit was clumsy, but the core of his thinking is relevant. The benefits that he was mentioning can be done without creating another. name for it. So what exactly are these benefits? How would this work? Yeah. So most of it's like giving Ukrainians access somehow to the EU institutions, usually on a non-voting but observer basis.

So representation in the EU commission, so the executive body, members of the European parliament who can't vote but can fully be in the debates and so on, even an observer judge on the European court. So it's not full membership because they can't vote. But it means you already create this familiarity between the two sides, which is definitely needed for a country to work properly in the EU. And it would be possible to do this, because these benefits are currently given once a country has signed the treaty to join, so that final process, final step of the process, but just before they become a member, so usually there's a gap. In that gap, they are given these benefits. Metz's ideas to give those benefits now, and it could

be done to all candidate countries if we all agree to do that. So I think the idea may live on, even if this title of associate membership doesn't. And I think that that was probably the right way to go. You give Ukraine something without the threat of it being stuck in some pergatory for 10, 15 years. Yeah. I think the Ukrainian government is really sensitive about these half measures in light of, you know, something discussed a lot since 22, the Budapest memorandum, where Ukraine and gave up its nukes for what it understood was security guarantees, when in reality that was understood by the other side as assurances that, you know, proved pretty much entirely useless if you ask anyone in the Ukrainian government. The Bucharest summit and, you know, the NATO's

infamous open door policy for Ukraine, where NATO said that Ukraine is bound to join one day, but it absolutely nothing to actually make that happen. And, you know, here we are. And now the perspective of NATO membership in the short to medium term seems quite impossible. So, yeah, I think the Ukrainian government and the Ukrainian people in general are quite sensitive to these half measures. But I do agree with you that I think the problem here was the wording and the actual sort of politics of all of this could have been done better. And I think we'll already discuss the visit of Martha Koss to Kiev this week.

Actually, during that visit, you know, after she talked to the lawmakers and addressed all of those reform issues. She also discussed this proposal, and she said that, you know, the term she used was accelerated gradual integration, a mouthful, not a bumper sticker at all, but does kind of, I guess, sounds better than associate membership, because it reflects, I think, in a fuller manner what that actually is, right? You're gradually integrating Ukraine and the EU structures before ultimately admitting it into the blog. I think we should just drop these labels. How can something both be accelerated and gradual to a normal person in the street? It's insane. That's also a very good point. Yeah, I think according to all of the reporting that I saw on this, she just made the point that

yeah, perhaps Mertes' communication wasn't perfect, but it did open an important debate that had to happen about, okay, how do we actually speed all of? of this up and how do we make this whole process less of a bureaucratic nightmare for Ukraine and actually give some carrots as well as the sticks, apart, of course, from the, you know, millions of euros they were receiving from the EU. But yeah, so it seems like, it seems like this wasn't merced going rogue. It seems like there is actually some momentum on this idea in the EU, right? Yeah. And actually, I think Germany is playing a way more constructive role than the press coverage of Germany, has anyone believe. The UK and US and Canada often get good press

whenever they do any small gesture. Germany is the biggest donor to, the biggest single donor to Ukraine other than the EU as a whole. It is clearly supporting opening all six of these enlargement clusters with no hesitations. It has no disputes with Ukraine. It sees only opportunities. It was bad at the beginning of the full-scale invasion, but really it's learned, I would say it's learned it's lessened since then. A lot of defense cooperation is happening. And with this letter, the way I read it was him trying to preempt some of the objections or concerns of other EU countries and trying to find a way to preempt those, get around those, so that they can drop those objections and move Ukraine forward. Now, did he do it in the best way? No.

Is Germany always the best voice to do that? Also no. But it definitely comes from a good place. And I think Ukraine can count on German sympathy and support for the long term. whereas, you know, other countries that have more swinging elections, let's say, they're a bit more volatile. Well, on that high note, Chris, this was excellent. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast, and I hope you'll come again soon. Yeah, thanks for having me here. It's been nice.

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