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Ukraine's European prospects are being improved

26.06.2022
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According to G. Korb

Ukraine received the status of a candidate for admission with unprecedented speed. On February 28, after the Russian invasion, President Volodymyr Zelensky submitted a corresponding application, it took the government a month to fill out a special questionnaire from the EU, and on June 23 the country received a candidacy. For comparison, it took Croatia almost a year to get candidate status. Bosnia and Herzegovina filled out the questionnaire alone for almost two years, and still cannot get the status of a candidate, although it applied back in 2016.

For Ukraine, this is not only a huge political breakthrough. It is also access to European financial funds for reforms, incentives for these reforms to be carried out quickly and an incentive for European investors to come to the country and invest in its economy, experts say.

Now the main question is when Ukraine will be able to finally integrate into the EU and whether this will happen in the same turbo mode as granting candidate status. Ukraine received the candidate status not only with unprecedented speed, but also on unprecedented conditions. According to the conclusion of the European Commission, now Ukraine must carry out reforms in seven areas from judicial reform to the protection of national minorities. This is a mandatory requirement not only in order to move on to the next stage - negotiations on our own EU membership. According to the decision of Brussels, if Ukraine does not fulfill all the conditions, the status of a candidate will be taken away from it.

Such a compromise made it possible to remove the arguments of the countries against such an accelerated European integration of Ukraine. Brussels will provide the first assessments of how Ukraine meets the EU requirements at the end of 2022. “There are steps that the parliament can take fairly quickly,” says Marianna Fakhurdinova, an analyst at the New Europe Center. “Other steps, for example, holding an open competition for positions in the judiciary, are longer, because they can only be fully carried out in peacetime ".

In addition, the decision to start formal negotiations on Ukraine's accession to Ukraine must also be made by the European Union at the highest level, as is now the decision on candidacy.

 

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