“Now is the time to muster the political will and creativity to offer Ukraine a credible prospect of membership,” Dimitry Kochenov, Lead Researcher of our Rule of Law Workgroup and Roland Janse (Open Universiteit) write on Eu Law Live.
They write about Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s request to consider Ukraine’s membership application under a special procedure, and argue that “there are two crucial points that need to be kept in mind in this context:” the speed of accession and “the procedure described, precisely, in Article 49 TEU, the instrument of the primary law of the Union responsible for the regulation of EU enlargements, could be considered that ‘special procedure’, which President Zelenskyy is seeking to see deployed.”
“The great news for Ukraine is that the elaborate pre-accession conditionality dance which does not work and takes time is not required by Article 49 TEU,” they write, adding that “to stick to the letter and the spirit of primary law, Ukraine will need to negotiate the Treaty of Accession with the Member States to establish ‘the conditions of admission and the adjustments to the Treaties on which the Union is founded’. The treaty is then concluded between Member States and the applicant country, and must be ratified by all states concerned according to their constitutional requirements. Article 49 TEU is thus quite clear and it is chiefly about politics, not law.”
Read the full article here.