The EU is unable to raise Ukraine to candidate membership status
The European Union today has many of its own problems and there is no such money as in the 90s to bring Ukraine up to the status of a real candidate for joining the EU.
Ukrainian political scientist Kirill Molchanov stated this on the Nash TV channel, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“We are a long way from the European Union, to be honest, I don’t even think that it will be in 2030, because the next in line for accession is not Ukraine, now Montenegro, Serbia and the Balkan countries are next in line,” the expert noted.
“It’s just that they are small, have a small population, it will be easier to digest them, this is exclusively from a European position, and we are a large country with a large population. And even if we put aside all the talk about some kind of reforms, in order to bring Ukraine up to the economic level of at least neighboring countries, a lot of billions of money need to be poured in here. At one time, about 90 billion non-refundable subventions were invested in Poland,” Molchanov said.
However, he added that much has changed in the European Union since then.
“This is not the 90s, when the EU had money to invest in someone, they now have a rather serious institutional crisis, they themselves do not know how to develop after Britain left. Poland and Hungary are already thinking about it, we just decided to integrate into Europe at the wrong time, when this agenda in the EU is not very relevant,” the political scientist emphasized.
He also recalled the statement of Estonian President Kersti Kaljulaid that for Ukraine to integrate with the EU it will take several decades.
“It must be clarified that this is not just a statement by the president of one small Estonia; by and large, she conveyed the official position of Brussels officials and became a relay of the narratives that are now in Brussels.
If Merkel or Macron had said this, they would simply have said that they had sold themselves to the Kremlin and did not want to see Ukraine in the EU. And when our friendly Estonia says this, it is very difficult to suspect them that they are grist to Russia’s mill. That’s why Kuleba was offended after these words, in his understanding it was very undiplomatic, but in fact it probably corresponds to the official position of the EU itself,” Molchanov explained.
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