Five Reasons Why the EU Should Grant Ukraine a Candidate Status

This summer, the 27 current member states of the European Union will have to make a formally minor, yet historic decision – how to formulate the EU’s answer to Ukraine’s entry application. While less in the spotlight, Georgia and Moldova too have filled out EU questionnaires about the state of their "Europeanization." None of the three countries is going to be immediately admitted to the EU. Like Kyiv, Tbilisi and Chisinau hope to get, instead, a statement from Brussels about their future possibility to enter the EU as full members. The "Association Trio," called so because of the three countries especially large Association Agreements with the EU, wants to become an "Accession Trio."

The European Commission, as its President Ursula von der Leyen has indicated during the last months, is on the applicants’ side. This month’s EC recommendation to the EU’s Council concerning the three applications may thus be favorable for the applicants. It will then be important that the Union’s member states too collectively formulate a message to Kyiv, Tbilisi and Chisinau that will, at least, partially satisfy the three countries’ aspirations.  The EU’s national governments should, this summer, publicly and clearly approve of the Association Trio’s plan to enter the Union – as soon as that becomes possible.

A frequent argument against an accession of Ukraine, Georgia, and Moldova to the EU (and NATO, for that matter) is the fact that all three of them do not fully control their states’ territories. Transnistria in Moldova, Abkhazia and the Tskhinvali region in Georgia, and parts of Eastern as well as Southern Ukraine are either directly or indirectly controlled by Moscow. Ukraine, moreover, is in an active war with Russia. For, at least, three reasons, this seemingly plausible caveat is a mere distraction from the issue at hand.

First, even a clearly positive signal from the 27 EU countries now will not mean the trio’s quick accession to the Union. An official membership perspective may not even inaugurate yet the three states’ candidacy for the EU. Instead, what seems currently most realistic for Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia is their upgrade to the status of so-called "potential candidates." Admission to this preliminary stage in the accession process implies the possibility to start entry negotiations, in a not-too-distant future.

Being "potential candidates" with a membership perspective would make the three countries’ relations with Brussels similar to Bosnia-Hercegovina’s and Kosovo’s current prospects with the EU. This company is not exactly a recommendation by itself. It is clearly less than, for instance, Ukraine’s political elite and civil society now want in view of their nation’s enormous suffering and heroic fight, during the last three months.

As only potential rather than proper candidates, Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova would formally lag behind such countries as Serbia and Turkey which obtained their candidate statuses in 2012 and 1999 respectively. Especially the latter date indicates that it is not quite clear what the start of a candidacy leads to. Serbia will one day be fully surrounded by EU member states while Ankara has already been in a Customs Union with Brussels since 1995. Yet, both long-term aspirants’ digressions from basic EU principles during the last 20 years mean that their membership aspirations may never materialize.

Second, Brussels’s rejection of a European country’s application on the basis that it does not fully control its state-territory would be a self-denigration of the Union. It would mean that outside forces have veto rights over the EU’s foreign, enlargement and domestic policies. Contrary to the assertions of the Kremlin propaganda and a number of confused Western observers, Moldova, Georgia and Ukraine are not "failed states."

Instead, the three countries are partially occupied by Russia. Their incompleteness is enforced by locally unwanted troops. These heavily armed soldiers have been sent by the dominant nation of the former empire to which the trio’s once colonized peoples involuntarily belonged. Will Brussels really push back the three independent states because they are still subverted by Russia? If so, the EU would implicitly signal its own limited sovereignty and that, in general, might is right.

Third, the EU has already admitted a country, Cyprus, whose government does not fully control the state-territory. To be sure, the Republic of Cyprus entered the Union officially with its entire territory in 2004. Yet, the acquis communautaire has since not been operational in the self-proclaimed and unrecognized "Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus."

This limitation is especially significant regarding the mutual defense clause of the 2007 Lisbon Treaty, the EU’s de facto constitution. Article 42.7 of the Treaty on European Union says: "If a Member State is the victim of armed aggression on its territory, the other Member States shall have towards it an obligation of aid and assistance by all the means in their power." Contrary to this obligation, the EU has only attempted to help Cyprus regaining its full sovereignty by diplomatic means, since the Lisbon Treaty went into force in 2009. There is thus a readily available model with which the incomplete republics of Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova could become members of the EU while the Union’s formal jurisdiction and defense obligation does not extend to non-government-controlled areas.

In any way, the actual accession of the Association Trio to the Union is still several years away. A status as "potential candidates" for the EU will, nevertheless, mean now more than some may recognize. That is because even this only pre-candidacy status would already change Ukraine’s, Georgia’s, and Moldova’s relationship with the EU not only in words, but in kind. In principle, the Treaty on European Union allows all European countries to become members. At first glance, a potential candidacy may thus look as not meaning much.

Yet, past experience has shown that the Lisbon Agreement’s general affirmative statement for all European countries does not provide a clear path to accession. Instead, the EU Council has first to confirm unanimously and in writing an aspirant’s current or future candidacy. After that, the applying state must properly prepare itself for entry negotiations. Once this preparatory stage – often in the form of an association – is passed successfully, the EU starts the applicant’s formal candidacy. The EU begins long-winded membership negotiations with the aspiring nation via a s0-called intergovernmental conference and with the active involvement of the Commission.

Ukraine’s, Georgia’s and Moldova’s European aspirations have already been publicly and repeatedly acknowledged by the EU’s Commission and Council. Moreover, the European Parliament asked the EU’s executive bodies several times to finally offer the three post-Soviet countries a clear membership prospect. In March 2022, Ukraine was even singled out, by the European Council, as belonging to "our European family" – whatever that means. None of these official yet inconsequential statements has so far opened, for Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova, the path to accession, however.

With the provision of even only a "potential candidate" status to the three countries, their 30-year limbo situation would eventually change. In spite of Ukraine’s far larger desires, this shift will already be fundamental. A transfer of Ukraine, Georgia, and Moldova from the stage of associated partners to prospective accession candidates makes a not only symbolic, but substantive difference. It would be geopolitically, administratively, legally, and psychologically significant.

The three countries’ status as potential or even proper EU candidates would change the international relations of Eastern Europe. The current security-political grey zone between the West, on the one side, and Russia as well as its satellites Belarus and Armenia, one the other, would become less grey. To be sure, only the three potential/proper candidate countries’ eventual accession to the EU and, in the cases of Ukraine and Georgia, NATO will eventually give full structure to the East European geopolitical space. Yet, an official membership perspective from the EU would already today designate where the train is going. A future accession offer would, from the view of the three aspirants, provide direction for their future domestic reforms and foreign affairs.

It would, from the West’s perspective, provide an important carrot with which the EU can speed up the East European transition. A membership perspective constitutes also a heavy stick in the hands of Brussels. The aspiring countries’ eventual inclusion is already assumed, yet still conditional upon full compliance with EU standards. Thus, the future accession offer is an effective instrument for Brussels and domestic reformers in the three countries to exert pressure on reluctant actors and immobile structures in the government, parliament, and administration.

With a potential or proper candidate status for Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova, the current ambivalent, if not contradictory meaning of their ambitious Association Agreements with the EU would be clarified. Since 2014, these three Agreements have been preparing the Association Trio for membership in the Union de facto. Yet, the mammoth treaties do not contain this aim de jure. In case of an announcement of a forthcoming candidacy, the EU would finally correct this obvious inconsistency in the already ongoing Association process with the three aspirants.

Once there is a clear membership perspective, it would become for all actors involved obvious what the next steps for Kyiv, Tbilisi and Chisinau will be. The three applicants, Brussels and member states could use the experience and institutions of recent EU arrivals and of other aspirants from Eastern Europe to formulate the three new potential candidates’ agenda for the next years. Knowledge, skills, models, and assistance from such countries as Estonia, Bulgaria or Croatia can be utilized for the Association Trio’s gradual rapprochement with the EU. A number of ad hoc institutions created by Brussels to prepare the Western Balkan countries for accession, like the Centers for Security Cooperation and of Excellence in Finance, could now also include Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova.

The three states’ designation as potential or even proper EU candidates would above all be an important boost of morale to Ukrainians, Georgians and Moldovans. Citizens of the three post-Soviet countries would finally understand what future awaits them, their children, and grandchildren. In particular, for Ukrainians, currently in a fight for their nation’s very existence, a demonstrative EU signal that their country’s path to future membership is now officially open would be uplifting.

Last but not least, for Moscow, an unequivocal positive answer from Brussels to Kyiv, Tbilisi and Chisinau will be a significant signal. Even an only potential candidate status for Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova will influence Russian-Western relations. Westward-looking Russians would be confronted with a collective European statement on the strategic relevance of these countries for the EU. A positive Western message for the Association Trio would be in glaring contradiction to the Kremlin’s portrayal of the three nations as failed or even non-existent. It would, in particular, challenge Putin & Co’s massive material and ideational attack on the lives, homeland and identity of Ukrainians. The Union should not miss this chance to make an as powerful as possible statement on what the European idea stands for.

Dr. Andreas Umland is an analyst with the Stockholm Centre for Eastern European Studies (SCEEUS) at the Swedish Institute of International Affairs (UI).