Accession of Ukraine to the European Union
| Accession of Ukraine to the European Union | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Status | Candidate negotiating | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
On 28 February 2022, four days after it was invaded by Russia, Ukraine applied for membership of the European Union (EU). Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy requested immediate admission under a "new special procedure", and the presidents of eight EU states called for an accelerated accession process. European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen stated that she supports Ukrainian accession, but that the process would take time. On 10 March 2022, the Council of the European Union asked the commission for its opinion on the application. On 8 April 2022, von der Leyen presented Zelenskyy with a legislative questionnaire, which Ukraine responded to on 9 May.
On 17 June 2022, the European Commission recommended that the European Council grant Ukraine candidate status for accession to the EU. On 23 June 2022, the European Parliament adopted a resolution calling for the immediate granting of candidate status for EU membership to Ukraine. On the same day, the European Council granted Ukraine the status of a candidate for accession to the EU. It is one of nine current EU candidate countries, together with Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, Moldova, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia, and Turkey.
On 14 December 2023, the European Council decided to open accession negotiations with Ukraine. Accession negotiations officially opened on 25 June 2024, at the same time as those with Moldova. This signified another milestone in this country's ongoing efforts to align more closely with Western nations and diminish Russia's influence. If Ukraine becomes a member of the EU, it will be another former Soviet country after Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, which all joined the EU in 2004.
In June 2025, Hungary blocked the opening of EU accession talks. Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán says it would mean "integrating war" into the European Union. German chancellor Friedrich Merz cast doubt on the possibility of Ukraine joining the European Union by 2034. On 2 September 2025, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that Russia did not oppose Ukraine's membership in the EU, but opposed its membership in NATO. On 28 January 2026, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz stated that Ukraine's EU membership is not possible on 1 January 2027, and called on Ukraine to fulfill the human rights, rule of law, and Copenhagen criteria in order to become a member of the EU. During the 2026 Slovak–Ukraine oil dispute, Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico explicitly threatened that Slovakia would withdraw its support for Ukraine's accession to the European Union if the oil flow through the Druzhba pipeline was not immediately restored.