Opinion / Christopher Cermak
Ready when you are
The EU’s 27 countries unanimously backed Ukraine’s official candidacy for membership of the bloc during a summit in Brussels yesterday. The implications of this, particularly for Ukraine’s own psyche in the midst of war, should not be underestimated. There is also broad public backing for the idea: a Eurobarometer poll released last month found that 66 per cent of EU citizens believe that Ukraine should join the bloc “when it is ready”. But when exactly will that be?
There’s a cautionary tale here. The prospect of EU membership has long served as a motivator for countries to reform their institutions but only if they’re convinced that EU membership genuinely lies at the end of the process. By contrast, a nation such as Turkey struggled for years to meet the EU’s terms of entry before turning its back on the bloc as the country’s authoritarian tendencies returned. Many western Balkan nations, in various stages of accession talks, will also roll their eyes at the phrase “when it is ready”.
It’s telling that Russia has put up little resistance to the granting of formal candidate status to Ukraine. Perhaps that’s because Moscow recognises that today’s development is symbolic and won’t have any material effect on its fortunes – unlike the 2014 EU “association agreement”, which brought practical benefits and prompted a then Moscow-friendly Kyiv to attempt to block it.
This is why a proposal by Emmanuel Macron (pictured) to create a “European political community” shouldn’t be dismissed out of hand. The idea would be to offer candidate countries incentives, binding them into some of the EU’s decision-making processes (tying Ukraine into its common defence goals would really get Putin’s blood boiling). The EU has struggled to keep prospective members on side as the negotiation process is inevitably drawn out over many years. More than ever, the bloc needs to ensure that this doesn’t happen with Ukraine.
Christopher Cermak is Monocle’s news editor.