The EU is considering the possibility of opening all negotiation clusters with Ukraine by summer

The High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs Kaja Kallas stated after the meeting of the EU Foreign Affairs Council that Ukraine has made great progress on the path of European integration. Therefore, the EU should seize the moment and open all negotiation clusters with Ukraine by the summer.

A video of Kallasʼ press conference was published on the Council of the EU website.

Kallas said that Ukraineʼs integration into the European Union is not a charity, but an investment in European security.

And European Commissioner for Enlargement Marta Kos said that the first cluster could be opened while Cyprus still holds the presidency, that is, until June 30. As for the other five, Kos hopes that they will be opened in July.

In April, President Volodymyr Zelensky announced that Ukraine plans to open negotiation clusters on joining the European Union by June. According to him, Ukraine has completed the tasks necessary to open the clusters, and from now on everything depends on the EU.

In December 2025 and March 2026, Ukraine received criteria (benchmarks) for accession to the European Union for six negotiation clusters. Since then, Ukraine has had a full package of conditions that must be met to join the EU. However, negotiations have not yet been opened for any of the clusters.

Ukraineʼs accession to the EU

Ukraine intensified cooperation with the European Union in 2014 after the victory of the Revolution of Dignity. In the same year, the Verkhovna Rada and the European Parliament simultaneously approved the Association Agreement between Ukraine and the EU. It entered into full force on September 1, 2017. The strategic course for Ukraine’s membership in the European Union and NATO has been enshrined in the Constitution since February 2019.

On February 28, 2022, four days after the start of the full-scale invasion, Ukraine applied for membership in the European Union under a special procedure.

On June 17, the European Commission recommended granting candidate status to Ukraine and set out a number of conditions that the country must meet before starting negotiations on accession to the European Union.

On June 23, EU leaders gathered in Brussels for a summit, where they granted candidate status to Ukraine.

The European Union allowed negotiations to begin at the end of 2023. They were formally launched in 2024, but the process has slowed down, in particular due to Hungaryʼs position, which is blocking the opening of negotiation chapters.

EU accession usually takes many years and requires the support of all member states, so even in the event of a political agreement, the process will be long and complex.

In February 2026, Politico sources reported that the EU was developing a plan that could grant Ukraine partial membership in the bloc as early as 2027 — this should be included in a peace agreement between Ukraine and Russia.

It later became known that the European Union countries mostly rejected the idea of providing Ukraine with a “reverse membership” plan, fearing that this reform would undermine confidence in the accession process.

In addition, according to Politico sources, for current EU members, admission to the bloc of richer countries is much more attractive than enlargement at the expense of poorer states, among which Ukraine.

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