The European Union will begin membership negotiations with Ukraine in the coming weeks or months, EU leaders agreed at a summit in Cyprus on April 23.
This is reported by Bloomberg, citing an EU official.
European Union leaders claim that Ukraine has met the conditions for starting the first stage of EU accession.
In an address to the European Council on April 23, President Volodymyr Zelensky said that Ukraine expects the first cluster of negotiations on EU accession to open in May.
"This is necessary to prevent Russia from endlessly blocking our path. And not just blocking, but also dividing and weakening Europe in order to stop Ukraine. A clear timetable and an expedited procedure can prevent this. That is why we are asking for this. We are ready to work together to ensure Ukraineʼs membership," he said.
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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