(Bloomberg) — European Union leaders agreed to open membership talks with Ukraine in a historic political win for Kyiv as it grapples with uncertainty over future financial aid from the US and Europe.
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“A clear signal of hope for their people and for our continent,” European Council President Charles Michel wrote in a post on X. He said that EU leaders meeting in Brussels also agreed to open accession talks with Moldova, granted candidate status to Georgia and said negotiations could begin with Bosnia once it meets the criteria.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban had opposed opening membership talks, saying Ukraine wasn’t ready and the topic should be removed from the summit agenda, prompting frustration in other European capitals.
Read more: What Ukraine’s EU Candidacy Means, and What’s Ahead: QuickTake
Orban wasn’t in the room for the final vote, according to two people familiar with the matter. The decision requires unanimous approval of EU member states, and nobody objected to the decision, the people said. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz suggested Orban leave the room to allow the bloc to move forward for now, one person added.
“Hungary didn’t want to take part in this wrong decision and therefore decided to stay away” from the vote, Orban said in a Facebook video Thursday, calling it a “senseless, irrational, wrong decision” to start EU accession talks.
EU nations also reached agreement on a 12th package of sanctions against Russia, including a ban on Russian diamonds and measures to better enforce the price cap on Russian oil, according to people familiar with matter. The sanctions deal will become official Friday after clearing procedural steps.
While Kyiv still faces hurdles in clinching funding from both the EU and the US, the country’s progress on joining the bloc will at least boost morale as it seeks to fight off Russia’s invasion.
The decision, however, is a somewhat symbolic one. The bloc won’t launch the more formal negotiating framework before March, when Ukraine has been asked to meet several additional conditions related to its membership bid.
Even with a green light from member states, the negotiations would still take years as the path to membership is lengthy and complicated. Croatia was the last country to join the bloc and its application lasted 10 years before it was formally accepted in 2013.
“Membership won’t happen overnight or even in a few years time,” Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar told reporters. “But we look forward to welcoming new members in the years ahead.”
Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskiy hailed the decision, saying he wants to thank everyone who worked to make it happen. “I congratulate every Ukrainian on this day,” he wrote on X.
Failing to open accession talks would have been a severe blow for Ukraine, after it invested so much time, energy and reforms in the process. It also could have damaged the EU’s reputation in the country, as the bloc falls short on a key plank of its support.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said earlier this week that of all the issues on the table at the summit, opening accession talks was “the mother of all decisions, the most important decision.”
The European Commission, the bloc’s executive, formally recommended in November starting the talks with Ukraine, as well as Moldova. At the time, the commission said it would monitor Ukraine and Moldova’s progress with the aim of reporting back to member states by March.
The commission said that before negotiations could start, Kyiv would need to enact legislation on minorities and corruption, and to regulate lobbying to bring it in line with European standards, among other steps. Kuleba said of the four laws the EU demanded it introduce by March, Ukraine has already signed three of them into law and the fourth would soon be adopted.
–With assistance from Andra Timu, Zoltan Simon, Kateryna Chursina, Katharina Rosskopf, Stephanie Bodoni, Natalia Ojewska, Slav Okov, Michael Nienaber and Jorge Valero.
(Updates with sanctions deal in sixth paragraph)
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