With the EU’s summit scheduled to take place on June 23-24 in Brussels nearing, Ukraine is stepping up its efforts to convince EU member states to grant it candidate status.
On May 29, the Deputy Prime Minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration of Ukraine Office announced the launch of the “Embrace Ukraine” campaign, which is aimed at promoting Ukraine’s European future.
“Today, Ukraine enjoys unprecedented support among EU citizens. Most of them (66%) believe that ‘Ukraine should join the EU when ready. Meanwhile, 71% underscore that Ukraine is part of the European family. It is important for EU member states leaders to listen to their citizens and grant Ukraine the candidate status,’” the official announcement reads.
The launch follows another statement published by Ukrainian civil society organizations on May 24, which calls on EU member states to grant candidate status “without any delays, conditionalities, and possible reformulations.”
“This will be a decisive recognition of Ukraine’s continuous reform achievements endorsed by the EU, as well as a powerful gesture of support to the people of Ukraine, who are now defending freedom and democracy on the frontline. This is especially important, given that Ukraine’s accession to the EU is supported by 91% of Ukrainians and 66% of EU member state citizens,” the statement reads.
Signed by high-profile institutions like the International Renaissance Foundation, Transparency International Ukraine, StateWatch, and others, it emphasizes that Ukraine’s entire anti-corruption infrastructure was built from scratch, with the country completing a host of pivotal reforms that Russia vehemently fears.
“The wider impact of Ukrainian reforms was recognized by Russian President Vladimir Putin. On Feb. 21, just a few days before the full-scale attack by the Russian Federation against Ukraine, Putin explicitly named and criticized Ukrainian anti-corruption and rule of law reforms in his speech. With this statement, he confirmed that the successful democratization and our European and Euro-Atlantic choice are one of the key reasons why Russians aim to destroy our nation,” the authors write, adding that EU member states must decouple the decision on Ukraine’s candidate status from the accession process of other countries.
European citizens are engaging actively as well.
On May 25, Arnaud Castaignet, former Digital Communication Officer for French President François Hollande, launched a petition titled “For Ukraine to be officially recognized as a candidate state to the European Union”.
The author underlines that “Ukraine is a European country and Ukrainians are asking for official recognition of their aspiration to join the European Union. We call on our fellow citizens of the European Union member countries to create a wave of support for the Ukrainian people and to encourage their heads of state and government to grant Ukraine the status of an official candidate country, a crucial step in the accession process.”
The petition has already garnered 243,060 signatures among Ukrainian and Western politicians, journalists, and analysts. They include Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski, former co-chair of the Greens/European Free Alliance Group in the European Parliament Rebecca Harms, French MP of La République en Marche Christophe Arend, and others.
The campaigns follow a set of announcements that cast doubt on Ukraine’s chances of receiving EU candidate status, one of the many laborious steps of accession to the European Union.
Instead, EU politicians like Dutch PM Mark Rutte suggest that Ukraine receives potential candidate status, as Kosovo and Bosnia Herzegovina have. Such a decision contradicts the idea of an accelerated accession procedure, rendering the hopes of joining the EU within the next five or even 10 years impossible.
