“A way needs to be found to open the first cluster,” said Siegfried Muresan, a conservative EU lawmaker who chairs the EU-Moldova Association Committee in the European Parliament. “It would send a signal to Russia. It would take away the argument for the narrative of the Russians, which is to say that there is no progress on the path to EU membership.”
But allowing Moldova to move forward while leaving Ukraine on hold risks angering Kyiv, whose EU membership bid has moved in lockstep with Moldova’s since both countries received an initial green light from the European Council in 2023.
“There is a danger here of sending the wrong signal to Ukrainians,” said a Ukrainian diplomat. “At a time when future peace is being discussed in Alaska, we need to keep the perspective of EU membership as strong as possible.”
Both Moldova and Ukraine have undertaken far-reaching reforms to join the EU, completing all the necessary steps to open a first negotiating cluster, according to a spokesperson for the European Commission.
“There is no objective reason to block Cluster 1,” the spokesperson added in an emailed comment.
Powerful message
The problem is that Ukraine’s bid is being blocked by Hungary, whose prime minister, Viktor Orbán, has made opposing Kyiv’s entry into the bloc a key plank of his own bid for reelection next year.