I’m Jack Power, Europe Correspondent for The Irish Times based in Brussels, and I’m manning the newsletter station today for Denis Staunton while he is away.
There was a period where Volodymyr Zelenskiy could do no wrong in the eyes of his European allies. The wartime Ukrainian president seemed to be playing all the right cards at the right time. Lately, though, he has been caught in a few missteps, likely born out of frustration.
European governments were not thrilled when Zelenskiy let himself get sucked into a sprawling public spat with outgoing Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán, over a damaged oil pipeline.
Zelenskiy’s repeated calls for Ukraine to be allowed to join the EU bloc in 2027, a timeline that would condense years of accession negotiations into the space of months, has been slapped down as a non-starter by several capitals.
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The debate around fast-tracking Ukraine’s accession into the 27-state union has the potential to become a tetchy fault line between Kyiv and other European capitals.
The Netherlands, Poland, France and several others are very sceptical about rushing Ukraine into the club before key reforms have been undertaken and bedded in.
There is a broad consensus that Ukraine’s future lies inside the EU. How quickly it moves from candidate to member state is contentious.
There is unease among Brussels officials about tearing up the union’s existing merit-based process, where prospective members complete wide-ranging reforms before joining.
The French and German governments have begun talking about some kind of symbolic EU membership-lite status for Ukraine, where Kyiv would be inside the tent without voting rights and given access to EU agricultural subsidies and other benefits.
A recent internal paper drawn up by Berlin fleshing out the idea, seen by The Irish Times, describes this as “associate membership”.
Zelenskiy will be looking for more than that to sell Ukrainians on the merits of accepting some future peace deal, which will involve a lot of difficult concessions elsewhere.
A controversy last year that ensnared Zelenskiy’s top aide reminded Brussels that Ukraine has a way to go when it comes to tackling corruption, a key concern when letting new members join the union. Graft allegations forced Andriy Yermak, a key figure in the president’s orbit, to resign after his home was searched in a corruption investigation.
The fact that Orbán is about to be replaced by Péter Magyar’s incoming government in Budapest is a huge relief to Ukraine.
Relations had turned particularly toxic between Zelenskiy and Orbán, who was blocking a €90 billion EU loan for Ukraine and stopping early stage accession talks from advancing.
Zelenskiy wasn’t exactly a paragon of diplomacy during the clash. At one point, he joked about giving the far-right Hungarian leader’s address to Ukrainian troops, so they could pay him a visit. That prompted a rare rebuke from the European Commission, who said the language was “not acceptable”.
The perception Zelenskiy was slow-walking repairs to a damaged pipeline at the centre of the spat frustrated senior figures inside the European Commission and other European governments.
The Druzhba pipeline transits cheap Russian oil to Hungary through Ukrainian territory. It was reportedly damaged by Russian bombs, but Orbán said he would veto the release of that €90 billion loan until Ukraine got the oil flowing again.
After some delays, Ukraine repaired the damage, which last week prompted Orbán to drop his opposition to the vital EU loan.
People will be watching to see how Zelenskiy and Magyar get on. The incoming Hungarian prime minister certainly won’t be as close to Moscow as Orbán became, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he will be a great friend of Kyiv.
Please let me know what you think and send me your comments, thoughts or suggestions for topics you would like to see covered to denis.globalbriefing@irishtimes.com
