Eduardo González
Spain has joined the Czech initiative, supported by another dozen countries, so that the Belgian Presidency of the Council of the EU accelerates the accession process of Ukraine and Moldova before the start of the next Hungarian Presidency.
“Spain has joined the letter initiated by the Czech Republic supporting the adoption of the negotiation frameworks that will allow the intergovernmental conferences to be convened this June that will begin the EU accession negotiations of Ukraine and Moldova,” the Ministry declared yesterday. of Foreign Affairs through the social network X.
Thirteen EU countries have sent a letter, at the initiative of the Czech Republic, requesting that the Belgian Presidency adopt, this June, the negotiating frameworks for the accession of Ukraine and Moldova and convene intergovernmental conferences with the two countries. The adoption of both measures, according to the letter, would imply the de facto opening of accession negotiations with Ukraine and Moldova and would “raise morale and boost reform work in these countries.”
The letter has been sent to the Belgian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Hadja Lahbib. So far, Germany, Estonia, Slovenia, Slovakia, Portugal, Sweden, Finland, Latvia, Poland, Ireland and Romania, as well as Spain, have joined this initiative. France has not yet done so, but has assured that it will do “everything possible” to help the first meeting take place before the end of June.
According to community sources informed to the ‘Financial Times’, the European Commission is going to “recommend” that the negotiations for the accession of Ukraine and Moldova be accelerated, considering that Ukraine has already completed all the prerequisites, such as the fight against corruption or the improvement of regulations related to taxes, among others.
The objective of the signatory countries is to open negotiations before Hungary assumes the Presidency of the Council of the EU, which begins on July 1. Therefore, according to the aforementioned sources, the Belgian Presidency could propose that the first round of negotiations begin on June 25.
Any step towards the accession of Ukraine and Moldova requires the approval of the 27 Member States, which could clash with the reluctance of the Hungarian Government of Viktor Orbán, which does not seem at all in favor of accelerating the accession process of Ukraine with the argument that This country is not in a position to enter the EU for legal and economic reasons.
Hungary has shown a rather fractious attitude towards the war in Ukraine almost from the beginning, sometimes helping to delay the adoption of sanctions against Russia, although without actually vetoing them. At the last European Council of the Spanish Presidency of the Council of the EU, held last December in Brussels, Orbán and the rest of the European leaders reached an agreement so that the Magyar prime minister would be absent from the room at the very moment in which that the agreement was voted on to begin the accession negotiations of Ukraine and Moldova, in order to avoid Hungary’s veto.
