(Brussels) Two days before a crucial summit, French Minister Clement Bonn said “complete consensus” emerged to grant Ukraine EU candidate status during talks on Tuesday between the 27th EU affairs ministers meeting in Luxembourg.
Posted at 6:13 am
Updated at 10:19 am.
On Friday, the European Commission issued a positive opinion on granting Ukraine and Moldova candidate status for EU membership, which will open the way for membership after a long process.
Tuesday’s discussion among ministers in Luxembourg “made it possible to show a broad consensus, and I could even say a complete unanimity […] Mr. Bonn, whose country holds the rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union, in particular with regard to Ukraine, announced the possibility of recognition of the candidate’s status as soon as possible.
“It is a discussion that will now belong to the meeting of heads of state and government” at the summit on Thursday and Friday in Brussels, he added.
“We have worked so that European unity can express itself again, so that we have an important, positive and possibly historic moment this weekend on this topic,” Clement Bonn continued.
“The accession process does not mean immediate accession,” the Minister Plenipotentiary for Europe stated.
“Precisely because this process is so time-consuming and long, we will have to consider not as alternatives, but as complements, additional measures, and in this spirit, the President of the Republic in recent weeks has stirred up a European political community,” he said. .
“We need to maintain perspective, the European flame even if the accession process begins,” he said.
