To Accept or Not To Accept: The question of Ukraine’s integration into the EU has brought Kyiv and its European allies to the brink of conflict

After Orbán: Kyiv and Brussels on the brink of conflict

Viktor Orbán’s defeat in the Hungarian elections has not only made it possible to unblock the EU’s €90 billion budget loan to Ukraine, but has also opened the door to the practical implementation of plans for the country’s accession to the European Union. Candidate status was granted to Kyiv on an accelerated basis as a gesture of political support as early as June 2022. In June 2024, the EU officially announced the start of accession negotiations, although Hungary’s veto blocked their formal progress. The paradox is that this seemingly highly positive turn of events could provoke the largest conflict yet in relations between Ukraine and its European allies. Hungary’s veto had shielded Brussels from having to address Kyiv’s demands for accelerated membership, which in reality most member states consider unrealistic.

Ukraine’s path to the EU: a timeline

The plan for Ukraine’s accelerated accession to the EU, under which the country would become a member of the Union as early as 1 January 2027, emerged during the drafting of a 20-point peace agreement on which Kyiv and its European allies worked at the end of last year. In February 2026, Politico, based on interviews with sources, outlined the contours of the EU’s ‘reverse enlargement’ concept: Ukraine could be declared a member before completing all the necessary procedures and reforms, while obtaining the actual rights of membership and access to EU mechanisms and funding gradually, as it fulfilled obligations and implemented reforms retrospectively. Moreover, such a procedure could also be applied to other candidate states, primarily Albania and Moldova.

The plan met with objections in many European capitals and within Brussels itself. In effect, it would fundamentally alter the EU’s enlargement practice, creating first- and second-tier member states within the Union. According to the Financial Times, the EU’s largest states, Germany and France, presented two documents setting out objections to the proposal, effectively putting an end to it. The German and French alternative plans reject the principle of ‘symbolic’ accession, instead proposing a special intermediate status for Ukraine, described as ‘associate membership’ in the German version and an ‘integrated state’ in the French proposal. However, under such a scenario, full membership status could still be around ten years away.

At the EU summit in Nicosia at the end of April, several European diplomats reportedly explained to Volodymyr Zelensky that Ukraine’s demand for full EU membership was unrealistic at present, writes the Financial Times in another article. Zelensky, however, remains dissatisfied with this position: the newspaper reports that he instructed Ukrainian diplomats not to discuss any intermediate arrangements other than full membership. Ukraine’s argument is that only full EU member state status, even if accompanied by temporarily limited rights, would extend to Ukraine the mutual defence clause contained in Article 42(7) of the Treaty on European Union. This, Kyiv argues, should form part of the security guarantees accompanying a peace agreement with Russia and compensate for the country’s inability, for now, to join NATO. Europe, however, appears more inclined to avoid such a scenario.

The enlargement dilemma: between geopolitics and reform

At present, 11 countries formally hold candidate status for EU membership, although domestic political priorities have shifted in Turkey, Georgia and Serbia. This leaves eight countries at varying stages of readiness for accession. The cases of Ukraine and Moldova have meanwhile forced the EU leadership to consider structural reforms to the enlargement process itself.

The problem is very real and extends beyond Kyiv. The process of adapting candidate countries to EU norms takes many years and often proves politically and socially painful. As a result, support for the prospect of future membership, a kind of distant and uncertain reward, gradually weakens both among the populations of candidate countries and within their elites. Sociologists previously observed this phenomenon in Georgia and Moldova, countries that had initially declared EU accession to be their strategic objective (→ Re:Russia: The Contested Underbelly). In turn, the waning support for accession expands the scope of influence for Europe’s geopolitical rivals – Russia and China. The strategic appeal of the European model is diminishing: unlike 20 or 30 years ago, the EU’s ‘soft power’ alone is no longer sufficient to anchor countries firmly within Europe’s sphere of influence.

In the case of Ukraine, the issue of accelerated accession is especially acute, while at the same time Ukraine itself threatens to become a critical challenge to the entire concept of EU enlargement, write experts from the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP). Brussels is forced to balance ‘between geopolitical necessity and a sensible integration policy’. The adoption of accelerated or phased membership standards would transform the established accession process, leading to rapid EU expansion and potentially creating a Union of more than 30 member states in the near future. This, in turn, would require sweeping institutional reforms, including the abolition or suspension of the veto principle in many areas.

Furthermore, unlike the Western Balkan candidate countries, whose combined population amounts to only 16 million people, Ukraine would become the EU’s fifth-largest member state, SWP analysts note. The financial transfers required under the Union’s cohesion policy, intended to reduce disparities in development between member states, as well as under the Common Agricultural Policy, cannot yet even be properly estimated given the country’s size, the scale of destruction to its infrastructure and economy, and the fact that Ukraine’s accession would increase the EU’s agricultural land area by approximately 25%. This would place enormous pressure on the existing subsidy allocation system, which is already one of the most politically sensitive issues within the EU.

Finally, previous rounds of enlargement have clearly demonstrated that the prospect of accession itself is the strongest driver of reform among candidate countries. After accession, the ability of EU institutions to exert influence declines sharply. According to SWP experts, the EU lacks both the institutional capacity and the political will to conduct a structured post-accession reform process. For example, concessions on judicial reform and anti-corruption benchmarks granted to Bulgaria and Romania upon their accession in 2007 resulted in the implementation of necessary changes dragging on until 2023, while their effectiveness remains open to serious doubt.

Accordingly, any ‘special status’ arrangement for Ukraine would need to satisfy two main objectives simultaneously: strengthening security guarantees while preserving incentives for domestic reform. SWP experts therefore propose granting Ukraine the status of an ‘associated candidate country’, implying substantial cooperation in the fields of security and defence, primarily within a ‘coalition of the willing’ rather than through the European Union as a whole. In the view of the experts, the EU will in reality be unable to assume full security obligations for either Ukraine or even Moldova in the face of a potential conflict with Russia.

Ukraine undoubtedly deserves special attention and consideration from the EU. However, such attention should not come at the cost either of undermining the unity and resilience of the Union itself or of weakening the reform process within Ukraine.

An ambiguous majority and integration with exceptions

The concerns expressed by experts, and shared by many officials and politicians in European capitals and Brussels itself, are more than justified. Even at the current stage of the accession process, the EU has struggled to secure Kyiv’s implementation of key requirements for aligning legislation with European standards. Under a model of ‘reverse enlargement’, practices of exemptions, concessions and diluted requirements would only multiply and risk becoming chronic. In the long term, Ukraine could become a more serious challenge for the EU than Viktor Orbán was while obstructing the country’s European integration process.

As noted in the review of reform progress in Ukraine prepared by Vox Ukraine, a total of 180 decisions altering the functioning of the economy and state institutions were adopted over the course of last year, compared with 139 in 2024. The most significant among them were legal measures aimed at improving the business environment, optimising the management of state assets and public finances, and reforming the social protection system. At the same time, four adopted regulatory acts received negative assessments from experts and were classified as counter-reforms. Most were connected to the anti-corruption sphere.

The most controversial case was the law approved last summer that effectively stripped the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine and the Specialised Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office of their independence by subordinating them to the prosecutor general. The law was subsequently repealed under pressure from Western partners and domestic protests, but it demonstrated the real fragility of the reform process and the possibility of reforms being reversed. Overall, the authors of the review conclude that Kyiv achieved its greatest progress in 2025 in social policy, business regulation and healthcare, while progress in anti-corruption reform was the weakest.

According to monitoring data from the EU’s Ukraine Facility programme, which provides for the allocation of €50 billion to Kyiv between 2024 and 2027 in exchange for reforms, the Ukrainian authorities failed to fulfil 14 programme benchmarks last year, resulting in the economy losing out on €3.9 billion in funding. In the fourth quarter alone, Kyiv failed to meet 10 benchmarks worth a total of €2.5 billion. The EU also froze around €560 million because of the failure to pass legislation on oversight of local self-government. According to Bloomberg, the European Commission is already considering tightening the conditions attached to part of the approved €90 billion loan package. In particular, Kyiv could lose €8.4 billion because of its refusal to implement a previously agreed increase in business taxation. Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko has described this reform as an ‘extremely sensitive issue’, with the government concerned that higher taxes would push a substantial share of businesses into the shadow economy.

Activists from the Ukrainian civil society movement ‘Chesno’ note in their own review that the Verkhovna Rada has systematically failed to assemble majorities for the approval of necessary legislation, especially in relation to sensitive economic questions. Ukraine’s ‘legislative debt’ concerns obligations to the IMF under the 48-month Extended Fund Facility (EFF) programme adopted last November, amounting to $8.1 billion. In particular, draft laws required for IMF assistance concerning the taxation of parcels, which would open the Ukrainian market to international marketplaces, and the introduction of VAT obligations for sole proprietors have still not been submitted to parliament, while implementation of customs service reform legislation is also lagging behind. Among overdue EU integration obligations, the review also highlights draft laws that have yet to be considered on the status of the state regulator in the fields of energy and utilities, road safety, the civil service, and the introduction of transparent procedures for appointing prosecutors to senior positions, with the latter initiative not even formally registered in parliament. In other words, an entire block of reforms in the sphere of public administration has stalled.

The review characterises the situation in parliament as one of legislative paralysis. Formally, the pro-presidential Servant of the People faction possesses a one-vote simple majority, with 227 deputies out of 452. However, in 2025 only an average of 167 deputies, or 75% of the faction, voted in favour of the most sensitive economic legislation. To secure passage of bills, the presidential faction has been forced to seek support elsewhere. Most often, assistance has come from the parliamentary groups Restoration of Ukraine, formed from remnants of the formerly pro-Russian Opposition Platform – For Life party and defectors from Servant of the People, as well as the Trust group. At the same time, according to Chesno’s calculations, the principal opponents of reformist legislation are Yulia Tymoshenko’s Batkivshchyna faction and the pro-Russian Platform for Life and Peace group. Deputies from other factions, including Petro Poroshenko’s European Solidarity, support reforms selectively. For example, a majority of European Solidarity deputies backed an increase in the military levy, a separate tax on personal and entrepreneurial income introduced in 2014, but opposed the introduction of a 5% sales tax on digital platforms.

Thus, while Volodymyr Zelensky continues to insist on accelerated membership, the actual balance of forces in the Verkhovna Rada demonstrates that a majority in favour of European integration exists only in relation to less sensitive issues and breaks down when legislation touches major financial or corruption-related interests. In practice, the Ukrainian president is unable to guarantee fulfilment of EU requirements even under the current parliamentary configuration. As a result, the model of ‘reverse enlargement’ genuinely risks becoming a trap for Brussels.

The domestic political outlook for ‘accelerated enlargement’ in Europe and in Ukraine

One of the principal obstacles to rational scenarios for Ukraine’s European integration is the political fragility of governing coalitions, both in Ukraine and across Europe. As Engjellushe Morina of the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) and Milan Nič of the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP), write in Internationale Politik Quarterly, the EU itself is today largely unprepared for another round of enlargement.

The EU’s ‘absorption capacity’ for new members without damaging its own effectiveness and stability remains extremely limited. This applies even to those countries that have objectively made the greatest progress towards integration, namely Montenegro, Albania and Iceland, which already belong to the European Economic Area and could resume accession negotiations should an August referendum produce a positive result. Admitting an evidently unprepared Ukraine in one form or another ahead of these frontrunners would undermine institutional trust in the EU itself. Meanwhile, integrating as many as five new member states simultaneously, including Moldova, would force the Union into urgent governance reforms and place additional strain on the EU’s next long-term budget cycle, which begins in 2028.

Furthermore, the rise of far-right sentiment in Europe is worsening the prospects of all EU member states ratifying accession decisions. European electorates are increasingly reluctant to grant preferential treatment to newcomers, which undermines the ‘policy of cohesion’. A Eurobarometer survey conducted a year ago showed only a fragile majority in favour of enlargement at 56%. In countries such as France, Austria and Czechoslovakia, supporters of enlargement were in the minority, at 43–45%. This issue appears particularly sensitive in the context of the French presidential elections scheduled for 2027. Enlargement could plausibly be blocked ‘from below’, exposing a widening political gap between decisions taken in Brussels and domestic political agendas within member states.

In Ukraine itself, the issue of EU accession is also a key driver of domestic politics. Support for accession remains high: according to a survey by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) conducted in late April, 63% of Ukrainians believe that within ten years their country will prosper as a member of the European Union, while 25% think Ukraine will remain a country with a devastated economy and substantial population outflow. At the same time, the share of Euro-optimists has declined over the course of the war. In October 2022, it stood at 88%, while in May–June 2025 it fell to a low of 43%. There is also no societal consensus regarding the need to implement all EU demands. Asked whether Ukraine should accept unpopular reforms, including tax increases, in exchange for financing defence and social programmes, 48% answered positively, while 30% answered negatively and 22% found it difficult to answer.

At the same time, the accelerated EU accession sought by Zelensky could become an important factor in the Ukrainian elections expected after the acute phase of the conflict with Russia subsides, elections for which the country’s political elite is already preparing. Indeed, for the first time since the beginning of the war, figures within the Ukrainian leadership have reportedly not ruled out holding elections before the full end of hostilities and have effectively begun preparations for such a scenario, according to Ukrainian media reports.

When asked by KIIS which they considered a greater threat to Ukraine, corruption or military aggression from Russia, 54% of Ukrainians in April chose the former and only 39% the latter. This paradoxical inversion illustrates the intensity with which Ukrainian society perceives the corruption problem: respondents believe that corruption, which the state appears incapable of overcoming, could ultimately devalue the nation’s achievements in resisting Russian aggression. The imbalance is particularly pronounced among those who distrust Zelensky. Among respondents who completely distrust the president, 76% named corruption as the greater threat, compared with only 16% who chose Russian aggression. Among those who ‘tend to distrust’ him, the figures were 56% versus 37%. These groups associate the prospect of a post-war corruption deadlock specifically with Zelensky himself. By contrast, those surveyed who identified Russian aggression as the greater threat, and who are therefore more willing to relegate corruption concerns to the background, tend both to express higher levels of support for the president and greater optimism regarding Ukraine’s future within the EU.

Thus, while the principal challenge to Zelensky’s political position is likely to come from the issue of corruption, significant progress towards EU accession, and especially accelerated membership in one form or another, could become one of the incumbent president’s strongest political assets. Such progress would help mobilise a coalition of optimists for whom success in resisting Russian aggression on the one hand, and in advancing European integration on the other, would push concerns about corruption into the background.