EU sets cautious Ukraine accession path with no membership date

Full text

BRUSSELS — The European Commission is preparing a more cautious roadmap for Ukraine’s EU accession negotiations, setting out limited targets for progress in 2027 while avoiding any commitment to a membership date, according to a document obtained by POLITICO.

Brussels has long sought to bring Ukraine closer to the EU in a broader effort to secure its future after Russia’s war, with eventual membership seen as a way to anchor Kyiv firmly in European institutions and make renewed Russian aggression more difficult.

In the document, Brussels calls on Kyiv to “urgently and significantly step up the pace of the rule of law reforms.” Meeting key requirements in this area in the first half of 2027 is necessary before negotiations in individual policy areas can be provisionally concluded, the roadmap says.

The document, part of the Commission’s enlargement package to be presented Wednesday, identifies seven policy areas in which Ukraine could provisionally complete negotiations next year. It highlights how far Ukraine still has to go before joining the bloc — and the difficulty of delivering the necessary reforms while fighting a war.

Decoupling from Moldova

The document also underscores a growing divergence between Ukraine and Moldova, whose membership bids have long advanced in parallel. Moldova is now seen as being in a position to make substantially faster progress, raising the prospect that the two countries’ membership bids will effectively be decoupled.

While Brussels is targeting progress in seven policy areas for Ukraine in 2027, Moldova could complete negotiations in more than 20, the document shows.

Ukraine applied to join the EU on Feb. 28, 2022, just four days after Russia launched its full-scale invasion. Moldova and Ukraine secured candidate status together in June 2022 and formally launched membership negotiations on the same day in June 2024.

Since then, Kyiv has completed a detailed examination of how its laws compare with EU rules and negotiations have formally opened across several major policy areas. In October, Ukraine and Moldova both opened talks covering the EU’s internal market, competitiveness and economic growth.

A long way to go

Joining the EU requires far more than a political commitment. Candidate countries must bring their laws and institutions into line with EU standards across 35 negotiating areas, known in Brussels jargon as chapters. These range from agriculture and food safety to competition rules, judicial independence and foreign policy.

The Commission’s roadmap identifies only seven such areas in which Ukraine could provisionally finish negotiations in 2027. Education and culture is targeted for the first half of the year, followed by intellectual property, employment and social policy, industrial policy, research, external relations, and foreign and security policy in the second half.

The Commission acknowledges that the changes are complex and require extensive consultations, time and resources. To help Ukraine make progress, Brussels has established a dedicated task force to provide additional support to Ukrainian authorities.

The difficulties are compounded by the war, which places extraordinary demands on Ukraine’s government and parliament as they seek to pass and implement the legislation required for EU membership.

Ukrainian rescuers clear rubble from a destroyed residential building after an air attack in Dnipro on Nov. 3, 2026, as the Russian invasion continues to complicate Ukraine’s path toward the EU. | Mykola Synelnykov/AFP via Getty Images

The Commission is careful in the document not to commit to an end date for Ukraine’s accession negotiations, taking a similarly cautious approach toward other EU membership frontrunners, including Albania and Moldova. Montenegro is the exception, with June 2027 envisaged as a target for signing an accession treaty.

Ukraine’s roadmap describes itself as a “living document” that can be updated as talks progress, leaving open the possibility of completing negotiations in additional policy areas sooner if reforms advance faster than expected.

The shadow of war

The uncertainty also reflects the wider challenge of admitting a country still fighting an existential war.

EU rules do not explicitly prohibit a country at war from becoming a member, but Ukraine’s accession would raise difficult questions about security, territory and the obligations EU countries would assume toward a fellow member under the bloc’s mutual assistance provisions.

Even a peace settlement would not automatically resolve those questions or remove the need for Ukraine to complete its reforms. And finishing negotiations in individual policy areas would still leave Kyiv facing further steps before membership, including an accession treaty requiring approval and ratification.

The Commission also wants talks on Ukraine’s two stalled negotiating clusters to begin by the end of 2026. These are cluster 4, covering the green agenda and sustainable connectivity, and cluster 5, covering resources, agriculture and cohesion.

The document states that the Commission considers Ukraine to have met the necessary conditions and urges the accession conference to make every effort to open the outstanding clusters before the end of the year.

Opening them would allow Ukraine to advance negotiations across the remaining policy areas, although the pace of subsequent progress will remain dependent on reforms and the relevant decisions by member countries.