DAVID FOLKENFLIK, HOST:
In February of 2022, just four days after Russia invaded Ukraine, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy applied for his country to join the European Union. He sought closer political and economic ties with the rest of Europe, even as he sought to shore up military support. Now, more than four years into the war, Zelenskyy is still on that quest. And tomorrow, leaders from the EU are gathering in Luxembourg, where they'll take the first formal step in considering Ukraine's bid. Engjellushe Morina is a senior fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, and she joins us now from Berlin. Welcome to the program.
ENGJELLUSHE MORINA: Thank you for having me on your program, David.
FOLKENFLIK: What exactly will this meeting entail?
MORINA: So if I could go back just a little bit, we had Viktor Orban as the prime minister of Hungary. And because everything in European Union is decided by unanimity, Viktor Orban had decided to put a veto on Ukraine's accession bid. So in April, Viktor Orban lost, and the new prime minister, Magyar, has a different attitude towards Ukraine's accession. So the veto is now lifted, and then the next step would be opening the negotiating chapters for Ukraine. The negotiations usually last for a few years. The important thing is the fundamentals is being opened, and then other clusters are supposed to be open in July.
FOLKENFLIK: With all that President Zelenskyy has on his plate, why does this matter to him and to Ukraine - this question of membership in the European Union?
MORINA: I think it matters a lot for Ukrainians, especially since February 2022. EU membership means also a sort of a security guarantee. It's not NATO membership, of course. But still, there are many perks that will be offered to Ukraine if it becomes an EU member state that would also mean security for Ukraine. And for a country that is currently at war, this means a lot when it comes to the reconstruction of Ukraine, to stability of economy, but also to stability of the - all returnees that have left Ukraine in the past four years.
FOLKENFLIK: What's the incentive for the European Union to take this on? Obviously, Ukraine's been, you know, torn up by war, and it is in a weakened economic state. What's the appeal to the European Union to even consider this?
MORINA: First of all, I think for Europe, it means consolidation of its neighborhood. So this is eastern neighborhood to the EU countries. European single market will be much larger. Ukraine has around 38 million inhabitants. So it's economic benefits, security benefits for EU. And also, European project will be consolidated and will be bigger, which means quite a lot for competitiveness.
FOLKENFLIK: What sort of response might Europe and the rest of the world expect from Russia?
MORINA: If I could go back to the end of last year when we started hearing that the peace negotiations between U.S., Russia and Ukraine are advancing, and one of the points in the peace negotiations was Ukraine becoming a member of European Union by 2027, this means that Russians might have nodded OK to this, but not a membership in NATO for Ukraine. And so in this case, I would say the response would be probably not so drastic.
I mean, they already responded quite drastically in 2014, when Ukrainians signed the association agreement. And that's when the Crimea happened, and that's when Donbas and Mariupol ended up in a conflict zone. But now I think Russians are probably seeing this as something that they would give in, but I wouldn't imagine they would be willing to talk about NATO membership for Ukraine. I think the war, in many ways, was a reaction - Russia's response to having already lost the power over Ukraine and the competition, in a way, to the accession process, because Ukrainians were very adamant that they wanted EU membership eventually.
FOLKENFLIK: We've been speaking with Engjellushe Morina. She's a senior fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations. Thanks so much for taking the time to talk with us.
MORINA: Thank you for inviting me. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
