The European Commission believes that Ukraine has met all the milestones in the far-reaching reforms required to open EU accession talks and is prepared to begin negotiations before the end of the month, said Commission President Ursula von der. Leyen, this Tuesday in Berlin. Brussels has already asked the Twenty-Seven to give the green light for the process for kyiv’s entry into the community club to begin imminently.
“Ukraine has complied with all the steps we asked of it. That is why we believe that the EU should begin accession negotiations with Ukraine at the end of this month,” Von der Leyen said during her speech at the beginning of the Conference for the reconstruction of Ukraine, which is being held these days in the German capital.
The President of the Commission stressed that this is the first time that this conference has been held on EU soil, after the previous two were organized in Switzerland and the United Kingdom. “And this is where your country belongs,” she said, addressing the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, sitting in the front row next to the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz. “Kharkov is Europe. Ukraine is Europe. And our union is your home”, she closed Von der Leyen’s speech.
Ukraine applied for EU membership just days after Russia launched the full-scale invasion in February 2022. By designating Ukraine as a candidate country in June last year, Brussels sent a clear political signal, as did Von der Leyen’s speech this Tuesday in Berlin. It will be 900 days since the invasion began and Western partners encourage each other to maintain and increase aid, both economic and military, to the Zelensky Government.
“What the Ukrainian army needs most urgently now is the shipment of ammunition and weapons, especially for anti-aircraft defense,” Scholz said in the opening speech of the conference. “The best reconstruction is the one that does not have to take place,” he added, and then appealed to the delegations of the countries present in Berlin: “Please support our initiative to promote Ukraine’s air defense as much as possible.” . Berlin will send to Ukraine “in the coming weeks or months” a third Patriot air defense system and more Iris-TSLM systems, the chancellor has announced, along with Gepard anti-aircraft tanks, missiles and artillery ammunition.
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Hungarian veto
The start of accession negotiations depends on Hungary, which has denounced kyiv’s “Hungarophobia”, lifting its veto. Budapest demands respect for the Magyar minority in Ukraine and insists that the teaching of minority languages and their presence in the media must be guaranteed. The rest of the EU members want negotiations to begin on June 25.
Meanwhile, aid will continue to flow from Brussels, assured Von der Leyen, who has spoken of 500 million euros for “urgent repairs” to the energy network and the sending of 1,000 electrical generators to guarantee the supply of energy to the population. Before the end of the month, 1.9 billion euros will also arrive from the Ukraine Fund. The president of the Commission has effusively praised kyiv’s effort to comply with the steps required by Brussels: “You have made the reforms while fighting a war.”
Zelensky thanked German help and recalled that now the most important thing to protect against Russian attacks is anti-aircraft defenses. The Ukrainian president has asked the countries present at the conference for help to protect the country’s electrical system and to repair the infrastructure destroyed in the bombings before the arrival of winter.
The conference is not intended to secure commitments of economic aid for Ukraine, German government sources said, but rather to establish contacts and make it easier for investors and companies to see it as attractive to participate in the country’s reconstruction. Von der Leyen has indicated that during the meeting agreements will be signed with European banks to attract private investment to Ukraine. Berlin has been mediating to ensure that Ukrainian companies have access to financing and that foreign companies are insured against the risks posed by investing in a country still at war.
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