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Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s hard push for Ukraine to swiftly join the EU is raising tensions with European capitals at a time when Washington weighs continued support for Kyiv.
A refusal by EU leaders to fast-track Ukraine’s accession has fuelled frustration in Kyiv, with the increasingly Eurosceptic rhetoric from the Zelenskyy administration undermining efforts to find a compromise.
Senior Ukrainian officials have used recent meetings with EU and US counterparts to criticise the European Commission’s handling of enlargement and press for a faster timetable, insisting that Brussels needs Ukraine in the bloc as much as Kyiv wants to join, according to seven officials present in those talks.
“Membership is not a gift,” said one of the officials, who declined to be identified, revealing private discussions. “Maybe there’s some misunderstanding in Kyiv about that.”
“They say: ‘You owe us’,” said a second. “And that’s not helpful.”
“We have a real problem there,” said a third official. “Zelenskyy and his entourage have never had a real understanding of how [enlargement] works.”
EU leaders earlier this month gave their green light to a €90bn loan to Kyiv to stabilise its finances and allow it to purchase more weapons in its defence against Russia’s war. The loan was unblocked after the election defeat of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who was holding up the money.
While the loan agreement and Zelenskyy’s participation in a summit in Cyprus last week helped to partially lower tensions, there remains a large disconnect between Kyiv and Brussels over the accession process.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz this week said Kyiv’s hopes for a quick entry were “not realistic”, adding that the price of any peace deal resulting in EU membership “may be that part of Ukraine’s territory is no longer Ukrainian”.
Ukraine was granted EU candidate status in June 2022, four months after Russia’s invasion. Zelenskyy demanded 2027 as an accession date, but EU capitals have balked at that idea. They equally rejected a “reverse enlargement” proposal from the Commission granting Kyiv membership status in name only, and then gradually giving it access to benefits when it enacts outstanding reforms.
France and Germany in recent weeks have suggested a staged process where Ukraine would get “symbolic” benefits and incremental access to EU mechanisms in exchange for meeting reform milestones. Officials said that would mean at least a decade before gaining full membership.
Asked by reporters in Kyiv last week about the Franco-German idea, Zelenskyy called on the EU to “be fair”, saying: “Ukraine does not need symbolic membership in the EU.
“Ukraine is defending itself and is definitely defending Europe. And it is not defending Europe symbolically — people are really dying,” he said. “We are defending it with everything we have, with all our strength . . . We are defending shared European values. I believe we deserve full membership in the European Union.”
Zelenskyy had instructed his diplomats not to entertain or even engage with any discussions with EU governments regarding such proposals and to talk only about full EU membership, two senior Ukrainian officials told the FT. “We won’t even discuss it,” said one of the Ukrainian officials.
In Cyprus, several EU leaders sought to curb the Ukrainian president’s expectations, two people briefed on the talks said.
“He had to hear some harsh truths,” said a fourth official. “It won’t be as easy as he thinks.”
Nevertheless, Zelenskyy is intent on pushing his maximalist position, say senior Ukrainian officials. One of the senior Ukrainian officials said that Kyiv believed the EU would grow “more realistic with some time” and move closer to the Ukrainian position.
Multiple EU diplomats said that they understood the pressure Zelenskyy was under after four years of war, and empathised with his frustration.
But they stress that the enlargement process must remain merit-based, and point out that with the end of direct US military and financial support and a sense of disengagement with a long-stalled peace process, the EU is now Ukraine’s most important partner.
“We are the only friends he has, so he might be better off keeping his mouth shut,” said the fourth official.
EU diplomats and officials said the country’s reform efforts had dwindled, particularly in the critical area of rule of law and anti-corruption measures. They also pointed to missed deadlines over the past year to implement legislation that would have enabled Kyiv to gain more access to the bloc’s markets for energy and industrial goods.
Kyiv is also resisting a request from Brussels to increase taxes on businesses as a condition for disbursement of part of the €90bn loan, arguing that it would be a drain on an economy already sustaining the costs of war.
“Their internal reform push has stalled,” said the second person. “It is not good and everyone knows it.”
Additional reporting by Laura Dubois and Barbara Moens in Brussels