Social Europe

politics, economy and employment & labour

  • Themes
    • Strategic autonomy
    • War in Ukraine
    • European digital sphere
    • Recovery and resilience
  • Publications
    • Books
    • Dossiers
    • Occasional Papers
    • Research Essays
    • Brexit Paper Series
  • Podcast
  • Videos
  • Newsletter

Ukraine’s EU candidate status—not just symbolic

Marie-Eve Bélanger 29th June 2022

The prospects of Ukraine joining soon remain slim, but the EU has reacted differently than to the collapse of Yugoslavia.

EU candidate,EU candidacy,Ukraine,Balkans
The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, addressing the European Council (EU)

Many observers have called the decision to award Ukraine European Union candidate status symbolic and only significant insofar as it reiterates the EU’s support for Ukraine. Others have noted that, beyond this symbolic value, the move will have no immediate consequences for the country.

There was indeed symbolism in the decision at the European Council on June 23rd but this is only part of the story. The notion that candidate status has purely symbolic value may be prompted in part by the tone of European statements about enlargement and in part by the unusual speed of the initial application process. Yet there are great financial, strategic and logistical effects for a neighbouring country to be recognised as a candidate state.

European values

On the rhetorical side, the EU has increasingly developed an identity and value-based discourse around enlargement, presenting it as an achievement of European ideals and a reunion of European peoples. Recent communications by EU officials about Ukraine’s bid for membership have been heavy in symbolic language, emphasising that Ukrainians belong to the European family, that they stand for European values and that they remind us of the importance of the EU as a peace project.

The president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, for instance, has said that ‘Ukrainians are ready to die for the European perspective’ and ‘we want them to live with us the European dream’. These are strong and powerful words of support for Ukraine but they do not commit the EU to enlargement—the definition of a symbolic gesture.


Our job is keeping you informed!


Subscribe to our free newsletter and stay up to date with the latest Social Europe content. We will never send you spam and you can unsubscribe anytime.

Sign up here

On top of this, and thriving on the European identity-and-values discourse, Ukraine’s application process has been expedited in a little over three months, with seemingly little oversight. This is extremely fast and bold compared with the process other current candidate states went through. For Balkan countries, it took anywhere from about two years (Serbia, North Macedonia and Montenegro) up to five (Albania) and multiple rounds of new questions to obtain the commission’s recommendation for candidate status.

This long lack of commitment has been explained by a merit-based rationale: these countries were simply not ready to start negotiating with the EU. The great acceleration of the initial application process by Ukraine makes the recommendation look symbolic by comparison—given Ukraine, clearly, is no more advanced in terms of internal reforms and convergence with EU standards than it was six months ago, when no talks about accession were on the table.

But as European identity and values are at stake, the EU has doubled down on its pledge to protect its own ideals by making Ukraine part of this fight, knowing very well that the speed at which the recommendation for candidacy has been granted does not equate with an acceleration in the accession process. Again, these are reflective of pure intentions without any actual commitment to granting full membership for Ukraine.

Important increase

However, without lessening the fundamental importance of symbolic statements in diplomacy, it would be a mistake to limit the scope of this announcement to the merely symbolic. Now that Ukraine has been granted candidate status, a lot will actually change for the country in terms of financial and institutional assistance.

First, Ukraine will be guaranteed an important increase in yearly transfers from the EU. Since September 2017, Ukraine’s association agreement has been the basis of the country’s bilateral relations with the EU. This provides financial and institutional assistance towards modernisation and reform of the legal and regulatory structure of Ukraine in the areas covered by the acquis.

Under the association agreement, Ukraine received €141 million in support for 2021. By comparison, that same year, Serbia, a candidate state with a far smaller population, received a little over €122 million through the Instrument for Pre-Accession Assistance (IPA). If Ukraine were to receive similar funding in proportion to its population, this would correspond to roughly six times the amount of support per year.

Secondly, Ukraine will now benefit from closer inter-institutional and cross-border co-operation to target the five main objectives and thematic windows of the IPA (rule of law, good governance, sustainability, competitiveness and regional co-operation). These represent the main targets of the conditionality process, which aims to ensure the convergence of candidate states with EU standards.

In other words, candidate states can rely on the guidance and structure of European institutions to identify and work on areas where improvements are necessary before membership. Thus, a more efficient reform agenda can be designed and implemented, with a real European perspective as the outcome.


We need your support


Social Europe is an independent publisher and we believe in freely available content. For this model to be sustainable, however, we depend on the solidarity of our readers. Become a Social Europe member for less than 5 Euro per month and help us produce more articles, podcasts and videos. Thank you very much for your support!

Become a Social Europe Member

Doing things differently

The speedy decision to grant Ukraine candidate status represents a shift in the way the EU has conducted the enlargement process since the fall of the Berlin wall. The conflict in Ukraine is not the first time a war has raged at the EU’s borders.

Throughout the 1990s, states in the western Balkans were also at war and seeking the EU’s help and solidarity. But this did not result in the EU taking accelerated steps to integrate these countries. More than 20 years later, they are still not part of the EU and their membership process is moving forward at a glacial pace.

This time, the EU has opted to do things differently. By granting candidate status to Ukraine early in the crisis, EU leaders have sent a signal with real and deep implications. It is symbolic at a time when Ukraine needs Europe to take a stand on its behalf, but it will also bring real and lasting financial and structural support to Ukraine in its quest for membership. This is the commitment Ukraine needs right now.

This first appeared on the EUROPP blog published by the London School of Economics and Political Science

Marie Eve Bélanger
Marie-Eve Bélanger

Marie-Eve Bélanger is a senior researcher at the Centre for Comparative and International Studies of ETH Zürich and the Department of Political Science and International Relations of the University of Geneva. Her research addresses the politicisation of European borders and the effect of the pandemic on discourses about them.

You are here: Home / Politics / Ukraine’s EU candidate status—not just symbolic

Most Popular Posts

Visentini,ITUC,Qatar,Fight Impunity,50,000 Visentini, ‘Fight Impunity’, the ITUC and QatarFrank Hoffer
Russian soldiers' mothers,war,Ukraine The Ukraine war and Russian soldiers’ mothersJennifer Mathers and Natasha Danilova
IGU,documents,International Gas Union,lobby,lobbying,sustainable finance taxonomy,green gas,EU,COP ‘Gaslighting’ Europe on fossil fuelsFaye Holder
Schengen,Fortress Europe,Romania,Bulgaria Romania and Bulgaria stuck in EU’s second tierMagdalena Ulceluse
income inequality,inequality,Gini,1 per cent,elephant chart,elephant Global income inequality: time to revise the elephantBranko Milanovic

Most Recent Posts

Pakistan,flooding,floods Flooded Pakistan, symbol of climate injusticeZareen Zahid Qureshi
reality check,EU foreign policy,Russia Russia’s invasion of Ukraine: a reality check for the EUHeidi Mauer, Richard Whitman and Nicholas Wright
permanent EU investment fund,Recovery and Resilience Facility,public investment,RRF Towards a permanent EU investment fundPhilipp Heimberger and Andreas Lichtenberger
sustainability,SDGs,Finland Embedding sustainability in a government programmeJohanna Juselius
social dialogue,social partners Social dialogue must be at the heart of Europe’s futureClaes-Mikael Ståhl

Other Social Europe Publications

front cover scaled Towards a social-democratic century?
Cover e1655225066994 National recovery and resilience plans
Untitled design The transatlantic relationship
Women Corona e1631700896969 500 Women and the coronavirus crisis
sere12 1 RE No. 12: Why No Economic Democracy in Sweden?

Eurofound advertisement

Eurofound webinar: Making telework work for everyone

Since 2020 more European workers and managers have enjoyed greater flexibility and autonomy in work and are reporting their preference for hybrid working. Also driven by technological developments and structural changes in employment, organisations are now integrating telework more permanently into their workplace.

To reflect on these shifts, on 6 December Eurofound researchers Oscar Vargas and John Hurley explored the challenges and opportunities of the surge in telework, as well as the overall growth of telework and teleworkable jobs in the EU and what this means for workers, managers, companies and policymakers.


WATCH THE WEBINAR HERE

Foundation for European Progressive Studies Advertisement

The winter issue of the Progressive Post magazine from FEPS is out!

The sequence of recent catastrophes has thrust new words into our vocabulary—'polycrisis', for example, even 'permacrisis'. These challenges have multiple origins, reinforce each other and cannot be tackled individually. But could they also be opportunities for the EU?

This issue offers compelling analyses on the European health union, multilateralism and international co-operation, the state of the union, political alternatives to the narrative imposed by the right and much more!


DOWNLOAD HERE

Hans Böckler Stiftung Advertisement

The macroeconomic effects of re-applying the EU fiscal rules

Against the background of the European Commission's reform plans for the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP), this policy brief uses the macroeconometric multi-country model NiGEM to simulate the macroeconomic implications of the most relevant reform options from 2024 onwards. Next to a return to the existing and unreformed rules, the most prominent options include an expenditure rule linked to a debt anchor.

Our results for the euro area and its four biggest economies—France, Italy, Germany and Spain—indicate that returning to the rules of the SGP would lead to severe cuts in public spending, particularly if the SGP rules were interpreted as in the past. A more flexible interpretation would only somewhat ease the fiscal-adjustment burden. An expenditure rule along the lines of the European Fiscal Board would, however, not necessarily alleviate that burden in and of itself.

Our simulations show great care must be taken to specify the expenditure rule, such that fiscal consolidation is achieved in a growth-friendly way. Raising the debt ceiling to 90 per cent of gross domestic product and applying less demanding fiscal adjustments, as proposed by the IMK, would go a long way.


DOWNLOAD HERE

ILO advertisement

Global Wage Report 2022-23: The impact of inflation and COVID-19 on wages and purchasing power

The International Labour Organization's Global Wage Report is a key reference on wages and wage inequality for the academic community and policy-makers around the world.

This eighth edition of the report, The Impact of inflation and COVID-19 on wages and purchasing power, examines the evolution of real wages, giving a unique picture of wage trends globally and by region. The report includes evidence on how wages have evolved through the COVID-19 crisis as well as how the current inflationary context is biting into real wage growth in most regions of the world. The report shows that for the first time in the 21st century real wage growth has fallen to negative values while, at the same time, the gap between real productivity growth and real wage growth continues to widen.

The report analysis the evolution of the real total wage bill from 2019 to 2022 to show how its different components—employment, nominal wages and inflation—have changed during the COVID-19 crisis and, more recently, during the cost-of-living crisis. The decomposition of the total wage bill, and its evolution, is shown for all wage employees and distinguishes between women and men. The report also looks at changes in wage inequality and the gender pay gap to reveal how COVID-19 may have contributed to increasing income inequality in different regions of the world. Together, the empirical evidence in the report becomes the backbone of a policy discussion that could play a key role in a human-centred recovery from the different ongoing crises.


DOWNLOAD HERE

ETUI advertisement

The EU recovery strategy: a blueprint for a more Social Europe or a house of cards?

This new ETUI paper explores the European Union recovery strategy, with a focus on its potentially transformative aspects vis-à-vis European integration and its implications for the social dimension of the EU’s socio-economic governance. In particular, it reflects on whether the agreed measures provide sufficient safeguards against the spectre of austerity and whether these constitute steps away from treating social and labour policies as mere ‘variables’ of economic growth.


DOWNLOAD HERE

About Social Europe

Our Mission

Article Submission

Membership

Advertisements

Legal Disclosure

Privacy Policy

Copyright

Social Europe ISSN 2628-7641

Social Europe Archives

Search Social Europe

Themes Archive

Politics Archive

Economy Archive

Society Archive

Ecology Archive

Follow us

RSS Feed

Follow us on Facebook

Follow us on Twitter

Follow us on LinkedIn

Follow us on YouTube