Rhetoric and reality collide as France, Germany,
Italy back Ukraine’s EU bid
In Kyiv, EU’s Big Three and Romania endorse candidate
status but war shadows Ukraine’s aspirations.
BY DAVID M.
HERSZENHORN
June 16,
2022 9:23 pm
By
proclaiming their support for Ukraine and Moldova becoming official candidates
for EU membership, the leaders of France, Germany and Italy on Thursday sent an
unequivocal message to Vladimir Putin: the Soviet sphere of influence is dead —
and it will not be resurrected by force.
The leaders
— French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, and Italian
Prime Minister Mario Draghi — also delivered another even more pointed and
immediate message to Russia: The EU and its allies will not strongarm Ukraine
into any surrender or territorial compromise to end the war.
“We want
the atrocities to stop and we want peace,” Draghi said at a news conference in
Kyiv, where he and his counterparts appeared with Ukrainian President Volodymyr
Zelenskyy. “But Ukraine must defend itself if we want peace, and Ukraine will
choose the peace it wants. Any diplomatic solution cannot be separated from the
will of Kyiv, from what it deems acceptable to her people. Only in this way can
we build a peace that is just and lasting.”
Such
reassurance came as a huge relief to Ukrainian officials who have feared
throughout the nearly four-month-long war that Western allies might try to
force an unjust settlement.
Each of the
three EU leaders has come under criticism in recent months for seeming to be
too accommodating of Russia’s gripes and demands, and potentially too willing
to appease Putin. Macron, for instance, negotiated endlessly with Putin to no
success, and has repeatedly urged that Russia not be “humiliated.” Berlin, in
turn, has been slow to send urgently needed weapons.
And yet,
despite the encouraging rhetoric, the trio of leaders — representing the EU’s
biggest, richest and most powerful countries — did not announce any dramatic
new military or financial assistance for Ukraine, which might help tip the war
in Kyiv’s favor.
By
contrast, U.S. President Joe Biden on Wednesday announced an additional $1
billion in support for Ukraine.
Ukrainian
casualties are rising as its military struggles to stop the Russian invaders
now occupying large swaths of the south and east of the country, including a
“land bridge” to Crimea, which Moscow invaded and annexed with lightning speed
in 2014. And there is no indication that Ukraine can achieve any peace without
a giant increase in aid.
The
proclamation of support for EU candidate status came during a highly symbolic —
if months late — trip to Ukraine, where the leaders visited Kyiv and Irpin, a
suburb where occupying Russian forces allegedly committed atrocities before
being repelled.
Other
leaders, including the Czech, Polish and Slovenian prime ministers, have been
visiting war-torn Ukraine since mid-March. European Parliament President
Roberta Metsola went at the end of March, and European Commission President
Ursula von der Leyen has visited Kyiv twice since the Russian invasion, in
April and again last week.
During much
of that time, Macron was preoccupied with his reelection campaign in France,
and Scholz had declined invitations to visit after Ukraine snubbed the German
president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who had wanted to visit in April.
For their
visit on Thursday, the trio of leaders were joined by Romanian President Klaus
Iohannis, representing the EU’s newer, eastern member countries — in an
apparent effort to blunt criticism that the big, founding countries were acting
as an exclusive clique.
Like his
travel companions, Iohannis also voiced his unequivocal backing for granting
candidate status to Ukraine and Moldova when the heads of state and government
on the European Council take up the question at a summit in Brussels next week.
Unanimity is required for approval.
Next steps
In a
required procedural step, the European Commission on Friday will formally
recommend the candidate designation, but it will refrain from doing so for
Georgia, which had also applied for membership. That decision, a serious
setback for Tbilisi, is a nod to political turmoil in the country. European
Council President Charles Michel has made largely unsuccessful efforts to
intervene and ease the unrest in Georgia.
While
Ukraine has been pushing hard to win candidate status, that designation alone
offers little indication about when, or even if, Ukraine would ever formally
become a member.
Macron,
Scholz and Draghi arrive in Kyiv for historic visit
Some
Western Balkans countries, including Albania, North Macedonia and Montenegro,
have had their bids effectively stalled for years. On Thursday, those three
countries publicly expressed their support for Ukraine and Moldova —
eliminating a potential reason that some countries had cited for not granting
candidate status next week.
But even as
they voiced their support on Thursday, Draghi, Macron and Scholz all left open
the possibility that the European Council could impose conditions on Ukraine,
including demands for strengthening of democratic institutions and rule of law,
before the country would be allowed to begin formal accession negotiations with
the EU.
Many EU
officials and diplomats said it is difficult to imagine Ukraine making much
progress toward actual membership until it is no longer at war, and Macron has
said that the overall process could take a decade or longer.
In Kyiv,
however, Macron sounded mostly positive notes.
“Europe is
at your side, it will remain so as long as necessary, until victory,” the
French president said. Macron also used the visit to announce that France would
send an additional six Caesar self-propelled howitzers to the Ukrainian
military, adding to the dozen that have previously been sent, as well as a
mobile DNA analysis laboratory to help with the processing of evidence of
alleged war crimes.
“All four
of us support immediate candidate status for membership,” Macron said, though
he noted that it was just the start of a longer process. “This status will be
accompanied by a road map and will also imply that the situation in the Balkans
and the neighborhood, in particular Moldova, be taken into account,” he said.
Draghi’s
strong words
Italy
traditionally has maintained among the closest relations with Moscow of any EU
country, and so Draghi’s strong words on Thursday supporting Ukraine and rebuking
Russia for the war no doubt delivered a special sting to Putin.
“Today is a
historic day for Europe,” Draghi said. “Italy, France and Germany — three
founding countries of the European Union — and the president of Romania have
come to Ukraine to offer their unconditional support to President Zelenskyy and
the Ukrainian people.”
Draghi,
too, stressed that Ukraine’s EU membership bid would take time.
“The most
important message of our visit is that Italy wants Ukraine to join the European
Union — and wants Ukraine to have candidate status and will support this
position at the next European Council,” he said, adding: “President Zelenskyy,
as he just said, naturally understands that the path from candidate to member
is a path, not a point. It is a road that will have to see the profound reforms
of Ukrainian society.”
The leaders
made their first visits to Ukraine since the country was invaded by Russia on
February 24th 2022 | Alexey Furman/Getty Images
Zelenskyy,
for his part, expressed satisfaction with the comments of his guests. “Our
country is doing its utmost to become an EU member,” he said. “And the whole
country desires it.” Among officials in Kyiv, however, the mood on Thursday was
not particularly ecstatic — reflecting both the difficulties in the ongoing war
as well as the reality that candidate status was just one step in a far longer
undertaking with no certain end date.
In an
interview, Ukraine’s deputy defense minister, Hanna Maliar, said it was
important that the prominent EU leaders got a firsthand look at the destruction
and evidence of atrocities in Irpin. “It is important to see the consequences
of this war personally because it is very difficult to believe that this can
happen in Europe in the 21st century,” Maliar said.
“When someone
describes it, it may seem that a person’s emotional description may be
exaggerating because it’s just scary what’s going on,” Maliar said. “It is very
important to see the destruction that the Russian Federation is doing. Here you
can see the full range of weapons that it uses, including those prohibited by
international law. You can see that almost 20 percent of Ukraine’s territory is
temporarily occupied. And this is almost the size of five Sicilys.”
The leaders
all said they were moved by what they saw. And Scholz offered unequivocal
support for Ukraine and sharp criticism of Russia.
“Ukraine
has been in a heroic defensive struggle against Russia for 113 days,” the
German chancellor said. “For this, I myself and Germany pays you great respect.
It is clear that this invasion of Ukraine marks a turning point, because Russia
is trying to shift borders in Europe. This is unacceptable.”
Scholz
noted that Germany’s decision to supply weapons to Ukraine marked a historic
shift, ending a longstanding policy of not delivering arms into an active war
zone.
“Germany
has broken with a long state tradition,” he said. “We support Ukraine by
supplying weapons, and we will continue to do so as long as Ukraine needs our
support.”
And he
added his voice to the backing for Ukraine’s formal membership bid. “Ukraine
belongs to the European family,” Scholz said. “A milestone on its European path
is the status of a candidate country. The EU member states will discuss this in
the next few days. We know: It needs unanimity among the 27 EU countries. At
the European Council, I will push for a unified position. Germany is in favor
of a positive decision in favor of Ukraine. That also applies to the Republic
of Moldova.”
Scholz said
that the EU, too, would need to make changes in order to accommodate a larger
membership. “The EU needs to prepare itself and modernize its structures and
procedures,” he said. Several officials have noted that Ukraine’s admission,
because of its relatively large population, would fundamentally shift the
balance of power in EU decisions made by qualified majority voting, in which
country size plays a role. Ukraine would also be in a position for a relatively
large delegation to the European Parliament.
The three
leaders also used their visit to urge Russia to help open Black Sea shipping
routes so that Ukraine can export millions of tons of grain that have been
blocked — adding to a global food crisis.
“We also
need to unlock the millions of tons of grain that are blocked in the ports of
the Black Sea,” Draghi said.
Maliar,
Ukraine’s deputy defense minister, said the visit should solidify European
unity against Russia.
“It is
important to see the eyes of people who have lost their children and homes, who
have lost their cities that can no longer be returned to,” she said. “What can
be seen now in Ukraine should clearly encourage everyone to unite and stop
Putin in Ukraine before he goes to Europe, because Putin’s appetites are much
larger and wider than Ukraine.”
Hans von
der Burchard, Clea Calcutt, Maia de La Baume, Paola Tamma, Christopher Miller,
and Laurenz Gehrke contributed reporting.
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