On 1 February 2024, the EU finished another Summit that had Ukraine, and its future relations with the EU, as one of its main topics. This meeting was in effect a continuation of the enlargement-related discussions of the previous Summit in December 2023, and had implications for other countries aiming for EU membership amidst the geopolitical storms battering the European continent, namely, on the financing side of this complex process.

Moldova and Ukraine applied for EU membership in February 2022. After a favourable opinion by the European Commission, and approval by the European Council, they were granted EU candidate status in June 2022 and, in December 2023, the European Council decided to open negotiations for EU accession with both. Georgia, on the other hand, applied for EU membership in March 2022 and was granted candidate status in December 2023, on the understanding that it takes the relevant steps as set out in a Commission recommendation (therefore, accession negotiations have not yet been opened with that country). ¹  

For both Moldova and Ukraine, the process so far has been speedy (by EU enlargement standards), and historically unique as it involves one country that is under an open military conflict with a belligerent Russia and has part of its territory occupied by military forces of that country (Kappner et al. 2022), and another that is under severe and continued pressure (albeit short of open military conflict) from that same belligerent power. Therefore, beyond the traditional promise of economic development normally associated with EU membership (often referred to as an economic ‘convergence machine’; see Ridao-Cano and Bodewig  2018), it also carries for those countries the promise of shelter from those pressures, and even of national survival (given the ‘mutual defence’ clause in Article 42(7) of the Treaty on European Union, which states that if an EU Member State is the victim of armed aggression on its territory, the other Member States have an obligation to aid and assist it by all means in their power)....

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