Politico: EU has effectively abandoned the idea of Ukraine's accelerated accession

The majority of the European Union countries did not support the proposal on the so-called "accession in advance" for Ukraine, which was previously discussed in the European Commission. This was reported by Politico citing diplomatic sources.

According to the newspaper, at a working dinner of EU ambassadors in Brussels, representatives of a number of countries made it clear to the team of European Commission head Ursula von der Leyen that their governments were not ready to support the idea of the so-called "reverse enlargement". They were talking about a revolutionary scenario that could allow Ukraine to gain partial EU membership already by 2027.

Sources said that even before the meeting, several key EU capitals had agreed on a tough stance against this approach. One diplomat described the atmosphere of the discussion as "calm", but stressed that the signal from member states was unambiguous: the initiative actually has no chance of being realised.

The issue is already closed. The idea of reverse enlargement is going nowhere else," said a European diplomat.

Several other negotiators also expressed doubts that such a model could be applied not only to Ukraine but also to other candidate countries.

According to one of the interlocutors of the newspaper, the discussion of such an initiative only created unjustified expectations.

Now we need to honestly admit that the idea of reverse enlargement was dead from the very beginning," he said.

At the same time, the diplomats emphasise that the EU countries still want to consolidate Ukraine's European future. However, they insist on preserving the current system of accession to the union - with fulfilment of all criteria and gradual progress based on reforms.

We want to see Ukraine in the EU, but we cannot deviate from our procedures and the principle that progression should be based on merit. Our task is to find a realistic way forward," one of the diplomats emphasised.