EU may propose new procedure for Ukraine’s accession talks - media
With the decision to start accession talks with Ukraine and Moldova, the EU is likely to propose a new procedure for their conduct.
This was told to journalists in Brussels by a senior European Commission official who spoke on condition of anonymity, Censor.NET reports citing European Pravda.
The European Commission representative reminded that the EU already has a practice of changing the negotiation framework for the states that join the European Union, and now the discussion on what the Ukrainian negotiation framework should be is already underway.
"The situation is changing. The negotiation framework for Albania and North Macedonia is different from the one for Serbia and Montenegro. And they have a different framework than Turkey had. We will see what the negotiation framework for Ukraine and Moldova will be, it has to be approved by the EU Council. But we can expect it to be different and more simplified," the source explained.
It is worth noting that there is still time to develop the negotiation framework. It will be approved some time after the political decision to start negotiations, which EU leaders will consider at the summit on 14-15 December. If a consensus on the negotiations is not reached now, the official preparations for the creation of the framework will be postponed.
According to the source, one of the ideas currently being discussed is to simplify the procedure for opening and closing individual negotiating chapters, which currently requires consensus, allowing Hungary or another country to block the process about 100 times during the negotiations. The EU has previously seen the harmfulness of this approach, adding to the slow pace of negotiations with the Western Balkan states.
Another challenge is that after such a decision, Ukraine's path to membership will be easier than that of the Balkan states, and this is unacceptable to many. "It's an intrigue how changing the Ukrainian framework will change the negotiations for the Western Balkans that have already begun," the European Commission representative explained.
