In December 2023, European Union leaders made the historic decision to open EU accession talks with Ukraine and Moldova. But two months into 2024, the negotiations have not yet started as fears still exist of going too fast too soon -- notably with Kyiv -- especially ahead of June's European Parliament elections.
And as Ukraine's and Moldova's enlargement journeys are connected, this of course applies to Chisinau as well. Most pressing are the negotiation frameworks that the European Commission, the executive branch of the EU, needs to adopt for both Ukraine and Moldova. Those two countries also have a "midterm" assessment, along with Bosnia-Herzegovina. The commission is due to deliver all these reports to EU member states on March 12. A more comprehensive report on all EU candidate countries in the Western Balkans and Eastern Europe is due at the end of October.
Deep Background: The easiest way to unpack all of this is to revisit the December 2023 summit conclusions that the 27 EU heads of state agreed on regarding enlargement. The conclusions state that "the European Council decides to open accession negotiations with Ukraine and with the Republic of Moldova. The European Council invites the council to adopt the respective negotiating frameworks once the relevant steps set out in the respective commission recommendations of November 8, 2023, are taken."
"Relevant steps" for Ukraine and Moldova normally means issues related to the rule of law in those countries. While Kyiv and Chisinau are working to address the issues, the question of whether they have satisfactorily resolved them is open to interpretation. It is the European Commission's job to decide and issue a recommendation. Then it's up to the EU member states to decide.
Related: Europe's Secret Weapon In Its Energy War With Russia
This is where Bosnia also comes into the picture. And again, it's worth looking back at those EU summit conclusions: "The European Council will open accession negotiations with Bosnia-Herzegovina, once the necessary degree of compliance with the membership criteria is achieved. It invites the commission to report to the council on progress at the latest in March 2024, with a view to making a decision."
Drilling Down
What You Need To Know: The already complex enlargement picture gets even muddier when it comes to Georgia and Hungary. More so, as the Hungarian European commissioner, Oliver Varhelyi, is also in charge of the bloc's enlargement negotiations.
On July 1, Hungary takes over the rotating six-month presidency of the European Council, which defines the political direction and priorities of the EU. Given Budapest's open skepticism of Ukraine's EU membership bid -- starkly illustrated in December 2023, when Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban had to leave the room while others voted to open membership talks with the war-ravaged country -- Kyiv might not see much progress in the second half of 2024.
Deep Background: EU officials and diplomats are broadly split into two camps. Some believe Hungary will act as a spoiler on anything Ukrainian and that every decision related to Kyiv will have to be made prior to July 1 -- or instead have to wait until Poland takes over the rotating presidency from Hungary on January 1, 2025.
The second camp is more optimistic and believes that Hungary will take a more moderate position during its presidency, given that the country must appear to be a neutral, honest broker for those six months. The optimists have also noted that if Budapest did want to spoil things, it could do so at any time, presidency or not.
My guess is that the intergovernmental conference will be held with Moldova and Ukraine in June. It's unlikely, but who knows, maybe even Bosnia will get one as well.
In this context, it is worth mentioning Varhelyi, who, despite the fact that he officially works for the European Commission, seems to be very aligned with the Orban government's thinking on enlargement. Case in point: screening. This is when European Commission officials sit down with their counterparts, in this case from Ukraine and Moldova, and go through policy field after policy field to determine how EU rules and regulations would be transposed into national law.
The screening is the meat on the negotiation framework's bones. Diplomats from EU member states expressed surprise when they learned in January that the screening with Ukraine and Moldova hadn't started immediately after EU leaders made the decision in December 2023. In fact, the screening still hasn't started, although both Ukrainian and Moldovan officials have claimed the opposite.
Related: 2 Companies That Could Help Europe Win Its Energy War With Russia
Quite why it has dragged on is unclear. One explanation is that Varhelyi didn't want to start the process until he got an explicit green light from EU member states to do so, whereas officials from other EU member states claimed that such a technical move didn't need to be signed off on by national capitals and that the European Commission was capable of taking such a step itself. So far, so Brussels.
Drilling Down
Ambassadors from EU member states are set to green-light another set of sanctions when they meet in Brussels on March 13. This time it concerns asset freezes and visa bans on around 35 people and entities that the bloc considers directly responsible for the death of Russian opposition leader Aleksei Navalny in a Siberian prison last month.
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg will present his annual report for 2023 the following day, on March 14. There will be a lot about the war in Ukraine and how prepared the military alliance is in case Russia were to attack any of its members. The report is also set to include new figures on how much the 31 allies have spent on defense in the past 12 months.
By RFE/RL
RFE/RL journalists report the news in 21 countries where a free press is banned by the government or not fully established. We provide what many… More