The two-day EU summit, which opened in Brussels on Thursday, March 20, discusses the strategic direction of cooperation with Ukraine in the changed conditions due to the efforts of Donald Trump. The doors of NATO have closed for the country. However, European leaders are signaling that Ukraine can receive the same or almost the same security guarantees from Russia from the EU, becoming a member of this organization in the foreseeable future.
The Russian-American dialogue that has begun and the difficulties that have arisen in relations with the United States are prompting European leaders to change a lot in their plans. Last year, membership in NATO, rather than the EU, looked like the “ceiling” of Ukraine’s integration aspirations. The accession to the European Union of a large country with a weakened economy, which was also destroyed by the fighting, caused too many objections in Europe. Now Trump has clearly explained that in order to end the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, the doors to NATO must be closed for the latter. So the EU leadership faced a difficult choice. It is possible to leave Ukraine outside the United Europe, a buffer state with Russia – this idea is championed, in particular, by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. But you can still, despite the possible risks and disadvantages, try to integrate it into the EU. The President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, spoke in favor of the second option.
On the eve of the summit in Brussels, the head of the EU’s highest executive body presented a roadmap for the European security strategy “Readiness 2030”. This document will be discussed by the leaders of the EU member states. According to von der Leyen, there are four essential components to a strategy. The first involves a sharp increase in defense spending. The second is the growth of investments in the military–industrial complex and, which is a relative innovation, in defense infrastructure. The Europeans, von der Leyen pointed out, should create opportunities for the rapid transfer of their troops from one part of the continent to another.
Since the end of the cold war and until recently, this infrastructure has only been destroyed. With rare exceptions, military airports and naval bases were not built. The West was not preparing for a major war or even for the expansion of NATO: until February 2022, the admission of countries east of Poland to the alliance was considered a purely theoretical possibility in the alliance. Now, as von der Leyen’s words suggest, a military alliance with Ukraine should be a practice, not a theory. The third component of Readiness 2030 is to increase Europe’s military–industrial base, ensure its independence from the United States in this matter, and develop defense industries within the EU to cope with the fourth component. That is, not just with the increase in military support for Ukraine, but also with the country’s accession to the European Union, which implies its joining all the organization’s defense programs.
On the very first day of the summit, Vladimir Zelensky delivered a speech remotely. The Ukrainian president recounted his conversation with Trump, noting, in particular, that they had not discussed the ownership of Crimea and the Zaporizhia NPP. Joining the EU does not seem to be attributed by Zelensky to the country’s foreign policy priorities. After all, it is possible only after the end of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict. Even the leaders of the Baltic countries are not talking about admitting Ukraine to the EU while the fighting is going on.
Finnish Prime Minister Petteri Orpo seems to be the most optimistic on this issue. The other day, he met with Zelensky and, following their talks, announced that Ukraine’s accession to the EU should be “as soon as possible, by 2030 at the latest.” Expansion is indeed planned in the European Union by this year, but the Balkan states were listed as candidates for admission to the organization. Now, according to Politico, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Denmark, Sweden, and Finland have sent a letter to the European Commission and the European Council offering to work out specific proposals for Ukraine’s accelerated admission to the EU. However, the letter will not be discussed at the summit. At least, von der Leyen did not name him among the topics of the event. By the way, the President of the European Commission herself, in principle, does not object to the accelerated admission of Ukraine to the EU. However, few people in Europe opposed the country’s Euro-Atlantic integration. However, Ukraine’s admission to NATO remained at the level of abstract promises and vague plans until Trump demanded that it be abandoned altogether.
On the eve of the summit in Brussels, the American president saw fit to remind his European allies that he is conducting his own negotiation process with Russia. In an interview with the Washington Examiner, he said that even before the phone conversation with Vladimir Putin on March 18, “I talked to him many times.” And Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who claims to be Trump’s main European ally, decided to remind the EU of his special attitude towards the Russian-Ukrainian conflict. He refused to sign the summit resolution because of the section on Ukraine, which therefore had to be published as a separate document. It welcomed the US-Ukrainian talks in Saudi Arabia and the subsequent resumption of the supply of American weapons and intelligence to Kiev. At the same time, European leaders indicated that the EU would neither reduce its military assistance to Ukraine, nor lift the seizure of Russian assets, nor abandon the creation of a special tribunal against Russian citizens. Last month, Hungary also blocked the opening of the first cluster of negotiations on Ukraine’s accession to the European Union.
However, as practice shows, the Hungarian veto on anything else has never been an insurmountable obstacle for the European Union. The main thing is that there should be a consensus of other EU countries on this or that decision, and Orban can be somehow negotiated or even dispensed with without his consent.
