March 18th stood another turning point on Ukraine's path to EU membership.

The third in just three weeks.

Let’s recall the previous two. On February 28th, Ukraine applied to join the European. Then, on March 11, the EU summit in Versailles give the "green light" for the Ukrainian application (for more details, see the article "The Road to Membership" in Ukrainian).

These decisions were important but they left unclear how long the EU will consider the Ukrainian application, given statements of some EU leaders that the process could not be accelerated.

Meanwhile, for Ukraine time is very important.

On March 18th, some clarity appeared. Negotiations between the Presidents of Ukraine and the European Commission ended with an agreement on a "fast track" - an accelerated path, for the first time in the recent history of EU enlargement. Brussels expects a positive conclusion on Ukraine's readiness for candidate status in a few months.

This article explains the procedure, options, and challenges.

Hidden acceleration

"The European path to Ukraine has already begun" - such an ambitious but vague statement was made on Friday by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen after a video meeting with President Zelensky.

Zelensky, for his part, announced an agreement to receive an "EC opinion on Ukraine's application" in a few months. It would be an accelerated procedure, says Deputy Head of the President's Office Ihor Zhovkva.

This sounds as a contradiction to the statements of French President Macron and Dutch Prime Minister Rutte, who opposed the 'accelerated procedure' for Ukraine on margins of the Versailles summit.  But in fact there is a ways to 'hidden acceleration'.

The road to membership can be split is several stages, some of them are 'conditionally mandatory'. They are not spelt out in any EU legislation act and are implemented purely by tradition. This means that they can be accelerated without violating the instructions of European leaders.

Before we disclose detailed plans for such acceleration, let’s look at the 'usual way' of the accession to the EU for those states that are currently on this path (candidate countries of the Western Balkans) or have had a candidate status recently (Croatia, Iceland).

The procedure is as follows:

1) the state submits a membership application to the EU;

2) EU Member States agree to start the examination of the application, instructing the European Commission to check whether the applicant meets the necessary criteria;

<Ukraine is here now>

3) the European Commission develops and sends a 'questionnaire' about the state of affairs in the applicant country;

4) after a couple of months of work the applicant state provides answers to these questions;

5) several months, sometimes more that one year, is needed for analysis of the answers and request for clarifications;

6) the European Commission gives a conclusion that the state can be a candidate for membership and capable to carry out reforms and change its legislation to the level required for EU accession;

7) the European Council confirms the candidate status of the country and decides to commence the accession negotiations;

8) negotiations on 33 chapters of the EU accession treaty begin; this is a long process aimed to harmonize the legislation and practices of the candidate country with those of the EU to enable future work in the common market;

9) the negotiations are progressing under the control of the Member States, the closure of each negotiating chapter must be approved by consensus;

10) after the successful conclusion of the negotiations, the European Council agrees by consensus on the country's accession to the EU, determining  the date of accession. The candidate country becomes an EU member state.

As you can see, we are at the very beginning of the road.

But right now, at this stage, there is room for acceleration. Items 3, 4 and 5 of this list, the next to complete for Ukraine, are those where von der Leyen's promise Ukraine to speed up the process, according to EuroPravda sources.

What is this questionnaire?

Legally, in order to start accession negotiations, the EU must be sure that the candidate country is European (here it is simple enough to open the map) and it is generally democratic, it respects fundamental rights and freedoms and does not discriminate against minorities.

In short, that it professes and defends European values.

The latter also leaves no doubt about Ukraine. The word 'generally’ is emphasized because at the stage of application it is quite normal to have certain shortcomings in the work of democratic institutions. A candidate country should be able to improve these institutions by the time of accession.

However, according to tradition, before granting the candidate status the European Commission conducts a check not only for "democracy".

The questionnaire provided to the applicant country is a huge document, providing a deep audit of the state.

Take, for example, Serbia. It applied for membership in December 2009. It took almost a year to agree on a "green light" political decision and then prepare a questionnaire, which Brussels sent to Belgrade in late 2010.

There were 2483 questions in the Serbian questionnaire, which themselves comprised 381 pages (the document is in possession of EP). Serbia mobilized all its efforts to respond as soon as possible and was very proud of the result - the first version of the answers was sent by Belgrade in 45 days, in January 2011. But the further process began, a request for clarifications from Brussels, etc., and the EC report with a positive conclusion was approved only in October 2011. Almost six months later, in March 2012, the European Council granted Serbia candidate status.

As a result, we have more than two years' time lap between the application for and granting the candidate status. Quite a lot.

However, such long work is not required.

Reasons for optimism

Another example to compare with is Iceland, that applied from membership, a couple of months before Serbia (although a few years later it withdrew the application).

So, Iceland applied in July 2009, and in February 2010, exactly six months later, the EU granted the candidate status and agreed to start negotiations!

What is the reason for such a big difference of the timeline?

The key reason was that Iceland was well known to Brussels bureaucrats. It has long been a member of the European Economic Area and EC did not lack relevant statistics and monitoring reports. In contrast, Europeans had to get acquainted with Serbia by the time. At the time of work with the the questionnaire, the Serbian Association and Stabilization Agreement with the EU did not even concluded!

In 2022 Ukraine is closer to the Iceland then to Serbia-2010. Brussels knows a lot about us. Annual reports on the implementation of the Agreement, "visa-free" reports, sectoral integration, etc provides most of the information requested in the questionnaire.

Moreover, there is reason to believe that we will move even faster than Iceland.

This is exactly what Zelensky and von der Leyen agreed upon, both official statements and EuroPravda sources confirm.

An important detail: the questionnaire is prepared individually for each applicant country and contains a series of questions related to a particular country - based on its economy, location and so on.

Therefore, questionnaires of Serbia and Iceland were differed in content, but similar in volume – each of them was about 2,500 questions-long. To imagine the scale of the work on this document, Reykjavik's responses to the EU questionnaire comprised 8,870 pages (!!!), of which 2,600 are textual responses, and the rest are clarifications to inquiries from Brussels, tables and other annexes.

And here goes the good news.

According to our sources, von der Leyen assured Zelensky on Friday that such a long document won’t be needed for Ukraine. It is unclear whether a decision will be made not to supply the questionnaire at all, "skipping" stages №3 and №4, or whether the commission will send a short questionnaire that can be answered in a week or two.

The final decision on the concrete track may be made at the EU summit on March 24-25.

But it is safe to say that there will be a fast track for the next few intermediate stages on the road to membership by Ukraine.

So what's next?

Forecasts during the war are illusive, but some preliminary conclusions can be drawn now.

Brussels is determined to prepare a conclusion on Ukraine's readiness for candidate status in the near future. Regardless of whether there will be a short questionnaire at this stage (most likely, there will be) or the Member States will informally authorise the European Commission for an even more radical reduction of the procedure.

An optimistic, but still the realistic deadline for granting Ukraine candidate status is the EU summit at the end of June 2022.

This date is very convenient for the EU because France will complete the election cycle a week before- the second round of parliamentary elections will take place. In Paris, they traditionally try not to take foreign policy steps during the campaign, fearing that it will irritate voters. Shortly before that, in April, there will be presidential elections where Macron, according to the latest polls, has every chance to win.

At the same time, France's presidency of the EU Council ends in June. Therefore, Macron, who after Merkel's departure is so eager to gain the role of informal leader in the EU, can use this opportunity: take this ambitious decision, prove the leadership of France, while avoiding electoral losses.

But do not be enchanted.

Afterwards, the road to the membership will not go as fast.

The next stages are much more formalized, they cannot be bypassed and are difficult to speed. The only way to quick membership is to carry out quick reforms here in Ukraine. Of course, simultaneously with its post-war reconstruction.

By the way, it will not be possible to even start membership talks until the end of active hostilities. Unless the war ends, we do not know our basic economic parameters. For instance, which territory will be returned to government control?

Ukraine will be a member of the EU, but our accession process will be slowed down till basic security issues are resolved.

For now, the key is to defend our independence.

Sergiy Sydorenko,

Editor of the European Pravda