Ireland's PM believes Ukraine should join the EU in "shortest possible time frame"
The Prime Minister of Ireland, Micheál Martin, believes that Ukraine should join the EU as soon as possible.
He stated this speaking at a conference of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe, The Times reports.
Martin stressed that he was a "strong advocate from the beginning" of Ukraine's accession to the EU and generally supported a "faster, more accelerated" accession process.
The head of the Irish government said that it was "very clear" to him that Ukraine's future lies in the European Union.
Martin believes that EU leaders should grant Ukraine candidate status in June. Opponents argue that this would be unfair to some countries in the Western Balkans, for which the accession process has been seriously delayed in recent years.
But Martin stressed that even before the war, he was critical of the slow pace of the accession process, especially concerning Northern Macedonia and Albania.
"I am of the view that we need to look at a faster and more accelerated process [of countries joining the EU]," he said.
With regard to Ukraine in particular, Martin said that "there has to be a period of engagement," as has been the case with Ireland for a long time before it became a member of the EU, but "it has to be in the shortest possible time frame."
"We are at a historic moment now, and the whole of Europe is saying 'enough is enough' in terms of authoritarian regimes, and democracy cannot be forever in retreat," he said.
Olha Stefanishyna, Ukraine's Deputy Prime Minister for European and Euro-Atlantic integration, who met with the Irish PM at the congress, said that Ukraine needed to be granted candidate status by the EU.
"We've submitted the application to be integrated into the European Union; we need promises to be materialized into concrete decisions as a candidate status. This is the ultimate decision at this stage," she said. She also said that was grateful for Ireland's support of the country since russia launched its full-scale invasion on February 24.
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As Rubryka reported, EU leaders agreed to consider Ukraine, Georgia, and Moldova's applications for membership in the bloc at a June European Council meeting. However, there is no consensus among EU countries on granting Ukraine candidate status.
French President Emmanuel Macron has called for an alternative to European integration, as it could take "decades" for candidate countries to join the EU. After that, Poland supported Slovakia's proposal to lobby the leaders of Western Europe, who "take a more restrained position" on granting Ukraine the candidate status for EU membership.
On the other hand, the poll conducted by the Rating Group on February 17 shows that 68% of Ukrainians support joining the EU and 62% support NATO membership, the highest figure in the history of such observations since 2014.
