Ukraine is poised to take an important step toward European Union membership on Monday. It’s a symbolic victory after many months of gridlock, and progress toward an affiliation that both Kyiv and European leaders hope could deter Russian aggression.
At a meeting in Luxembourg, European Union officials are expected to officially kick off work on a first set of important reforms that Ukraine must prove it has made in order to join the 27-nation bloc. Ambassadors cleared the way for the move late last week. Moldova will also advance.
The requirements the two nations must now satisfy include commitments to protect the rule of law and basic rights, like privacy and expression — both core values of the European Union.
Former Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary, Russia’s closest ally within the European Union, had long thwarted the opening of Ukraine’s negotiations. But Mr. Orban’s recent electoral loss to Peter Magyar, now the country’s prime minister, has paved the way for Ukraine’s bid to advance.
Ukraine has pushed for membership to begin as soon as 2027. But joining the European Union takes years, and a rapid membership process is unlikely. Mr. Magyar himself has implied that Ukraine’s path into the bloc could take more than a decade.
Here’s what to know about the road ahead for Ukraine.
Joining the European Union takes time.
Ukraine officially became a candidate for European Union membership in June 2022, not long after Russia’s full-scale invasion. It was a political gesture of support by the European Union nations, but was widely viewed as a promise for the distant future.
That’s partly because Ukraine’s bid faced challenges, particularly from Mr. Orban. who soon warned that allowing Ukraine into the European Union would intensify competition for the continent’s farmers while siphoning funding away from existing members.
With time, he became a barrier to Ukraine’s progress even as Ukraine made joining the European Union a central request in talks over a possible future peace deal.
Ukraine has been working with E.U. officials behind the scenes to push ahead with changes it would need to make before joining the bloc, like working to combat corruption. Now that Mr. Magyar has removed the hurdle Hungary posed, those discussions can move ahead officially.
“They are delivering reform after reform, while their cities are under attack, while the sky above them is filled with smoke,” Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Union’s executive arm, said this month of Ukraine. “This basically opens the door to the next phase of the accession process.”
Even so, joining the European Union is not simple. There are more than 30 areas of reform that candidate countries must prove they have met, divided into six thematic sets. Ukraine is about to start on just the first set of issues, which focuses on what the European Union calls “fundamentals.” Those include meeting certain standards for public procurement, statistics and justice systems.
Getting through the full process takes nine years on average, a point Mr. Magyar recently underscored.
If Ukraine makes the necessary overhauls “within the next 10 to 15 years, Hungary will support Ukraine’s accession,” Mr. Magyar wrote on social media this month. Even then, it would be “subject to a legally binding referendum.”
Could Ukraine get on a faster track?
Mr. Magyar has been clear that he does not support fast-tracking Ukraine and Moldova into the European Union, an idea that has been floated for months.
Among the proposals for expediting Ukraine’s membership is one from Chancellor Friedrich Merz of Germany, who suggested in May that Ukraine could join as an “associate member,” which would allow it to come to meetings without voting rights. That idea has received limited political support, with French and Polish officials among those who have warned against an acceleration.
More recently, Mr. Merz and President Emmanuel Macron of France circulated a proposal that wouldn’t speed up the process, but would allow candidate countries to gradually integrate into the E.U. market with more favorable trade terms, and to gain other benefits, before they had fully joined the bloc.
“The new approach would offer immediate and tangible progress to all candidate countries,” according to a version of the proposal seen by The New York Times.
“The point is to give more economic impetus” to keep making needed reforms, said Nina Vujanovic, an affiliate fellow at the economic think tank Bruegel. For countries like Montenegro, for instance, the process has stretched out over nearly two often frustrating decades. Officials may want to avoid a similar experience for Ukraine and other countries working to join the bloc.
Significant barriers to joining quickly remain.
There are two big reasons that many E.U. countries are not eager to sharply speed up the membership process for Ukraine.
One is the reason that Mr. Orban raised. Ukraine is large, and much poorer than most countries in the bloc. Less affluent members receive more E.U. funding, so that could cost existing members. Ukraine also has a large agricultural sector, so its ascension to the E.U. would intensify competition for the continent’s farmers.
Second, admitting Ukraine adds the risk of more dissenting voices in a bloc where unanimity is the goal. The European Union’s recent experience with Hungary has made clear that members who backslide on democratic norms can become a real barrier to decision-making.
While Ukraine has been making progress, it still struggles with concerns about corruption and democratic oversight. For instance, Mr. Zelensky’s move to clamp down on anticorruption watchdogs last year was quickly reversed, but it stoked concern within the bloc.
At the same time, adding Ukraine would come with big eventual benefits for the nation, and for the European Union, if it deters Russia by shoring up Kyiv’s security.
“Enlargement is not about setting dates, but about reforms,” Marta Kos, the European Union enlargement commissioner, said during a Tuesday speech, adding that “a united Ukraine will receive support.”
Steven Erlanger, Constant Méheut and Koba Ryckewaert contributed reporting.
