Why Ukraine Cannot Become Part of the EU

Joining the European Union is not a declaration of good faith, but rather an entry into a legal and economic system. Membership means that a given country is able to adopt and implement the entirety of EU law—from judicial guarantees to public procurement to food chain supervision—while strengthening, rather than weakening, the common market, the common budget, and the relationship of trust between member states. The issues of supporting Ukraine and Ukraine’s EU membership cannot therefore be conflated: the former may be a decision interpreted as a geopolitical and humanitarian obligation, while the latter is subject to technical conditions, and if these are overridden, it will make the EU itself less able to function.

Ukraine submitted its application for accession in 2022 and was granted candidate status that same year. The European Council decided to open accession negotiations in December 2023, and the first intergovernmental conference was held on June 25, 2024, formally launching the negotiation process. In recent months, however, the focus of the debate has not been on the ‘pace of progress’ but on the political target date: Kyiv—and several actors in Brussels—are increasingly talking about Ukraine enjoying full membership around 2027 and accession being treated as a ‘security anchor’ of the peace framework. This logic is also reinforced by the political communication of Ursula von der Leyen and Marta Kos, the commissioner in charge of enlargement, which emphasises the acceleration of integration as a strategic goal. By contrast, some member states fear that acceleration would come at the expense of necessary reforms. This is precisely why the EU’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, recently acknowledged that member states are not ready to give Ukraine a specific date for accession.

In any case, the pressure is palpable, and previously unthinkable ideas are already emerging in the discussions in Brussels, such as ‘partial’ or ‘reverse’ enlargement—​​meaning ‘minimal’ accession, with limited rights—which in itself indicates that acceleration is not in line with the traditional accession logic. Manfred Weber and the EPP have long been one of the strongest political drivers of enlargement, but even for them, accession should be a question of criteria and merits, not a mark in the calendar fixed in campaigns and geopolitical bargains.

The Copenhagen criteria exist precisely because the EU is not an ‘alliance of good intentions’ but an institutional order. The conditions for accession are for a candidate state to have a stable democratic institutional system, guarantees of the rule of law, protection of fundamental rights and minorities, a functioning market economy, and the fulfilment of the obligations of EU membership—the acquis communautaire. The problem in Ukraine’s case is that in a war environment and with partly deficient institutional capacities, full compliance is difficult to demonstrate within the foreseeable future. The Commission’s 2025 country report also states that Ukraine does have “some level of preparedness” in the areas of justice, and in the fight against corruption progress has been made, but further substantive work is needed. This sentence, in the language of the accession process, is not praise but a warning to be cautious: for the common budget and the trust of the common market, a partially functioning rule of law is not enough.

The fact that Ukraine is at war is a serious obstacle to membership in itself. Full membership presupposes the uniform application of borders, customs and regulatory systems, market surveillance, and state services, whereas the burden on the security environment, the infrastructure, and the state administration in Ukraine is constantly extraordinary. In such circumstances, a date-bound accession would either result in permanent exclusion or membership on paper, without real implementation—both of which would undermine the internal functioning of the EU. It is not by chance, therefore, that several member states are expressly opposed to considering accession as part of a peace deal, fearing that it would undermine the incentive to reform the Union.

The most tangible risk, however, is economic: Ukraine’s entry into the common market and the common agricultural policy (CAP) would mean both competitive pressure and budgetary realignment. The EU was already forced to build in market protection safeguards during the wartime ‘autonomous trade measures’ to ensure that member state producers did not suffer disproportionate damage from the rapid increase in Ukrainian exports; both the Council and the Commission spoke of separate safeguard clauses and automatic brake mechanisms. This in itself refutes the naive assumption that membership is just an administrative issue: if protective barriers are needed even with temporary trade facilitation, then in the case of full membership, market and social tensions would be incomparably greater. Policy analyses also indicate that by 2024, Ukraine had become one of the EU’s largest sources of agri-food imports, with a significant share in some product groups; this can directly influence internal market shares and prices. 

For countries like Hungary, this is not an ideological debate but a question of survival: the domestic agriculture and rural economy depend on the CAP, on the stability of the market, and on not being subjected to supply shocks from one year to the next that a more capital-rich Western European producer can easily cope with, but Central European farmers cannot.

Energy security is closely linked to the economic dimension. The Druzhba pipeline dispute, which has been ongoing since the beginning of 2026, shows how vulnerable Central Europe is if a transit country—whether intentionally or because of some external constraint—treats supply routes as part of a political conflict. Hungary and Slovakia claim that Kyiv is delaying the restoration of the flow of crude oil for political reasons; Ukraine, on the other hand, says that a Russian attack caused the damage and that restoration will take time. Whatever the reason behind the stoppage, the fact remains that the pipeline has not been delivering oil for weeks. As a result, the controversy has been directly integrated into EU decision-making, because Budapest has blocked or attached conditions to several EU decisions due to the dispute. 

If a country can weaponise energy supply to extort financial support before becoming a member state, one can imagine what its potential for pressure as an EU member would be. And here we come to the most serious point: blackmailing and threatening member states is incompatible with EU membership. In recent weeks, the Hungarian-Ukrainian dispute escalated when Zelensky publicly hinted that if Budapest continues to block the €90 billion EU loan package, “Ukrainian soldiers” could “talk” directly to the Hungarian prime minister. One could dismiss this as just rhetoric, but the way to resolve disputes in the EU is not to send messages loaded with military imagery to each other’s leaders. EU membership presupposes a minimum of mutual respect: everyone has the right to disagree, but pressure must remain within institutional and legal boundaries. Anyone who oversteps this line will be confronted not only with a member state but with the very logic of the community’s functioning. 

The conclusion is thus simple and requires no further explanation. Ukraine can be a strategic partner of the EU, and gradual integration—linked to programmes, investments, and trade mechanisms—can be a realistic, defensible path. But full membership cannot be given away as a political gesture, lest the Union risk falling apart.