Former head of the European Commission proposes a partial EU membership format for Ukraine

Former President of the European Commission Jean-Claude Juncker has put forward the idea of Ukraine's partial membership in the European Union, as a lot of transformations are still needed for full accession to the EU.

According to Yevropeiska Pravda, Jean-Claude Juncker, who headed the European Commission in 2014-2019, proposed the idea of Ukraine's "partial membership" in the EU in the format that Ukraine would participate in some internal EU processes and meetings, but would not have the right to vote.

"Ukraine will not be able to become an EU member very quickly... There are still many unresolved problems in Ukraine, from corruption to the rule of law, which need to be dealt with before we can seriously talk about Ukraine's accession," Juncker was quoted as saying.

In his opinion, for Ukraine, such a "partial membership" format would signal the recognition of its European integration work by European partners.

Juncker has already made a similar statement: a year ago, he said that European partners should not give Ukrainians "false promises" of rapid accession to the EU and that the country is not yet ready for membership, in particular because of "corruption at all levels of society."

However, during the presentation of the internal Resilience Plan in the Verkhovna Rada, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that in early 2025 Ukraine would start the first negotiations on EU accession. According to him, the screening of Ukrainian legislation is already at the final stage.

On November 11 and 12, in Luxembourg, the Ukrainian delegation took part in bilateral meetings with the European Commission as part of the official screening of the compliance of Ukrainian legislation with EU law. This meeting was devoted to the negotiated Title 18"Statistics". This section is the final one in the block of issues included in Cluster 1 "Fundamentals of the EU Accession Process", which is considered to be crucial throughout the entire accession negotiation process. At the time, the Minister of Justice of Ukraine Olga Stefanishyna noted that despite the ongoing full-scale war, Ukrainian statistics continues to undergo qualitative transformations to adapt to EU standards. The official said that Ukraine is awaiting the European Commission's report on Cluster 1 screening.

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