Andreas Umland writes:

At first glance, the status of potential EU candidacy may not sound like much. It would put the three countries [Ukraine, Moldova, and Georgia] on par with Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo, which are not exactly on a fast track to membership. It would clearly be less than Ukraine and its supporters in the commission want, placing it behind current membership candidates Turkey and Serbia, which has been an EU candidate since 2012. The latter two countries’ paths away from the EU’s democratic norms over the last 20 years mean that their membership aspirations may never materialize.

Notwithstanding these uncertainties, even potential candidate status would mean much for Ukraine and the other two aspirants. It would formally ratify their European aspirations, which have already been publicly and repeatedly acknowledged by the European Commission and European Parliament. In March, the European Council, where member states make their decisions, released a statement that Ukraine belonged to “our European family,” though it failed to say whether that implies future membership. The shift of Ukraine, Georgia, and Moldova from mere “associated” countries—a status reserved for the EU’s partners around the world—to potential accession states and its various formal mechanisms of alignment with the bloc has not only symbolic significance but also geopolitical, legal, economic, and psychological significance. It would give the three aspirants a direction for domestic reforms and geopolitical alignment.

The three countries’ status as potential or even proper EU candidates would shift the geopolitics of Eastern Europe. The current gray zone between the West and Russia (with its satellites, Belarus and Armenia) would become a little less gray. To be sure, only full EU and NATO membership would secure the Eastern European geopolitical space. But by giving the three aspirants an official membership perspective, the EU would send a strong signal of where the train is headed. [Continue reading…]