Eight billion – the foreign podcast: Will Ukraine join the EU?

“You belong to us.

And we want her with us.”

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said these words in an interview with euronews on February 28, 2022.

Four days after the Russian attack on Ukraine.

And just a day later, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, as the country's acting president, submitted an official application for membership.

Ukraine's desire for membership of the European Union has been around for a long time.

At the end of 2013, the then President of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych, did not sign an association agreement with the EU that had already been drawn up.

As a result, protests, some of them violent, broke out on the Maidan Nezaleschnosti, »Independence Square« in Kyiv, known today as »Euromaidan«.

In the face of the Russian war of aggression, the desire for membership in a protective community is growing, and joining the EU has become an argument to emphasize or demand solidarity and helpfulness from the West.

But even if Ursula von der Leyen and other high-ranking politicians promise accelerated proceedings, the war will probably have to end before serious negotiations can take place.

This is also due to Article 42, Paragraph 7 of the EU Treaty of Lisbon.

"And there it says that if a country is attacked militarily, all other EU countries must do everything in their power to help this country," explains Markus Becker, SPIEGEL correspondent in Brussels.

»It doesn't say explicitly that this help has to be provided militarily.

However, that is not in NATO article five either.

That's why some say: For this reason alone, you shouldn't necessarily take a country with open armed conflicts into the EU."

Under what conditions would Ukraine's accession to the EU be possible?

Is an accelerated procedure actually conceivable - what about other accession candidates who have been waiting for negotiations for years?

And does the EU have to be reformed first?

Markus Becker talks about this with host Olaf Heuser in this episode of the foreign podcast »Eight Billion«.

Listen to the current episode here: