Ukraine to start EU membership negotiations – Ukrainian minister

According to Olha Stefanishyna, Ukraine's Deputy Prime Minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration, the realistic time for opening negotiations on EU membership is 2023.

She told about this in an interview with European Pravda.

"The year 2023 looks absolutely realistic. The EU did not start working with us on June 23. We prepared almost 6,000 answers to the questionnaire and did it together with the EU. All the reforms we made together to implement the Association Agreement. That is, the understanding of Ukraine is very great. Therefore, certain procedures, such as screening, evaluation of markets, and legislation, are not something that will take years but are already work that needs to be formalized. Therefore, it is realistic to proceed to negotiations after all evaluations already in 2023," Stefanishyna said.

When asked why the EU ambassador called the "second half of 2023" a possible deadline, she explained that the European Union makes forecasts based on a more cautious scenario.

According to her, greater clarity regarding the start of negotiations will appear at the end of 2023, when the presidents of the EU and Ukraine will meet.

According to Stefanishyna's assessment, Ukraine can fulfill the requirements within the negotiations for even three years, and we are definitely not talking about a decade.

"We have a strong position, which consists of taking the initiative into our own hands. We do not wait and do not sit idle until the EU tells us how to proceed in the EU. We do not want to follow in the footsteps of the last enlargement countries; we do not want to be part of the Balkan expansion format because each wave of expansion has certain historical aspects.

Ukraine received formal status only in June, but before that, we did a lot and carried out a lot of reforms and fulfilled a lot of obligations under the Association Agreement, which, in principle, in the conditions of the war, made essential decisions possible: visa-free transport regime, joining the European energy system, cancellation of tariffs and quotas, and many, many things that will happen at the beginning of the year," explained the Deputy Prime Minister.