As widely expected, the EU has unlocked the disbursement of its previously agreed €90 billion (£78 billion) loan to Ukraine.
Together with the approval of the 20th package of sanctions against Russia, this is good news for Brussels. It became possible after Hungary dropped its opposition following a change of government after recent parliamentary elections.
How many more such decisions the union will be able to make, and how fast, remains to be seen. Former Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán may have been the most vocal disrupter of the EU’s Ukraine policy, but he was not the only one. Former close allies of his – Andrej Babiš in the Czech Republic and Robert Fico in Slovakia – stay in power.
Another election in Bulgaria on April 19 returned the arguably Russia-leaning former president, Rumen Radev, as the likely next prime minister in Sofia. None of these are as explicitly hardline as Orbán was. But their combined ability to at least water down EU policy – limiting or conditioning aid for Ukraine and potentially delaying or softening sanctions on Russia – remains real.
So, for Ukraine the news is also rather more mixed than the headline of the end of the Hungarian veto would suggest. Granted, the disbursement of the €90 billion will help Kyiv plug critical financing gaps over the next several years.
Orbán’s exit doesn’t deal with other critical challenges in the EU-Ukraine relationship, especially regarding the divergent views on Ukraine’s path to EU membership.
Apart from Kyiv’s most ardent Baltic supporters, scepticism about Ukraine’s membership abounds. Some EU member states – like France and Germany – have already made it clear where they stand regarding the union’s future relationship with Ukraine. For them, it’s about due process and avoiding shortcuts. At best, they seem to contemplate a somewhat enhanced status for Ukraine within the EU in the interim.
Others hold more Ukraine-sceptical positions, especially regarding certain policy areas that they consider core national interests. For example, with parliamentary elections in Poland scheduled for 2027, it is unlikely that even the current clearly pro-European government of Donald Tusk will endorse the early and full access for Ukrainian agricultural products to the EU market or the application of the bloc’s common agricultural policy.
This scepticism in national capitals potentially also complicates relations between member states and EU institutions in Brussels. After a meeting on the sidelines of the EU leaders summit, European Council president António Costa, European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky called “for the opening of negotiation clusters without delay”. But the power to decide on this lies with member states’ foreign ministers who are likely to vote on the issue at the end of May. If they approve, this will be the next important move in Ukraine’s accession process. But it’s only the first step in what could be a prolonged journey.
Common cause
Zelensky’s ambition to achieve membership by 2030 now seems more unrealistic than ever. With his timeline knocked off course and even the terms of membership unclear, the question arises how Ukrainians will respond to this.
The EU and Ukraine both see Russia as an existential threat. And both agree that Ukrainians’ defence of their country is crucial for European security. This has made it easy to reach an understanding that Europe will financially and politically support Ukraine’s effort to defeat Russia and open the doors to EU membership.
This basic understanding remains intact. But translating it into concrete policies has revealed important divisions about the (affordability of) financial commitments and the timelines and conditions for Ukraine’s EU accession.
Compromise position?
As always, the EU will hash out a compromise that articulates the lowest common denominator between those that prefer a swift accession for Ukraine, and those that oppose the watering down of accession conditions. It remains to be seen whether this compromise will be palatable to Ukrainians. Individual Ukrainians would gain access to the benefits of EU citizenship – the ability to live and work in the EU. But Ukraine as a country would not enjoy the benefits of full and equal state membership – including voting rights on EU legislation and the automatic disbursement of EU structural funds.
It’s questionable whether this is economically viable for Ukraine. The country has already suffered a serious loss of human capital – on the frontlines and through emigration. If this were to continue, let alone accelerate if Ukraine’s young people were offered free movement, it would seriously weaken the country’s resilience in the face of Russia’s continuing onslaught.
This, in turn, could add to narratives inside and outside Ukraine that question the possibility of continued resistance and urge seeking a settlement with Russia. Pro-Russian arguments could well be strengthened by blaming the EU for weakening Ukraine by luring its young and talented workforce into the bloc while denying full membership to Ukraine as a country, casting further doubt about the dependability of the west as a credible partner.
Declining trust in the EU and a desire for rapprochement with Russia would ultimately reinforce the idea of positioning Ukraine as a bridge between Russia and the west. This was the approach tried, under significantly better circumstances, in the first two decades after Ukraine’s independence.
As the EU-27 decide how to move forward, they need to remember that this Ukraine-as-a-bridge approach already failed once in 2014 – with the devastating consequences of this failure only becoming fully apparent in 2022. There is nothing to suggest that this approach would fare any better if it were tried again.
Stefan Wolff is a past recipient of grant funding from the Natural Environment Research Council of the UK, the United States Institute of Peace, the Economic and Social Research Council of the UK, the British Academy, the NATO Science for Peace Programme, the EU Framework Programmes 6 and 7 and Horizon 2020, as well as the EU’s Jean Monnet Programme. He is a Trustee and Honorary Treasurer of the Political Studies Association of the UK and a Senior Research Fellow at the Foreign Policy Centre in London.
Tetyana Malyarenko does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.