Several EU countries defend veto rights on EU membership applications for their own reasons, which could harm Ukraine – media
Some European Union countries do not support the idea of introducing a qualified majority to accelerate the accession of Ukraine and Moldova for their own reasons and thus may become situational allies of Hungary, not sharing its position on Ukraine's European integration, Politico reported.
"The plan faces pushback from several EU countries, including France, the Netherlands and Greece, and is unlikely to get wide approval in Denmark, according to three EU diplomats and a French presidency official who spoke to POLITICO on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive deliberations. The concern among these countries is that by changing the accession rules, they would also be limiting their own ability to block membership bids they see as problematic, the same people said. That opens up a host of rivalries that Orbán can play upon: It's important to the Greeks, for example, to show they can hold up talks on Turkey's membership, just as Bulgarians want to be able to draw the line on North Macedonia, and Croats to block Serbia," the publication said.
The plan was proposed by European Council President António Costa ahead of a meeting of EU leaders in Copenhagen on October 1 to find a way around Hungary's opposition to Kyiv's entry into the bloc. His proposal was to change EU rules to allow formal accession talks to begin after approval by a qualified majority of leaders, rather than by unanimous consent as is currently required. Costa's proposal would also open the way not only for Ukraine, whose application has been delayed for months by Orbán's veto, but also for Moldova, as the two countries' candidacies are linked.
A senior EU official said Costa's proposal would be discussed in Copenhagen on Wednesday, along with another proposal to use frozen Russian assets to help Ukraine. "No leader to this day replied with a total 'no' to this idea," the senior official said, referring to Costa's rule-change proposal.
Costa's initiative this week received support from the European Commission, where officials have privately said the current process, which requires unanimous votes in more than 100 stages, is too cumbersome. Finnish President Alexander Stubb told the publication that he supports any attempt to speed up the process.
But the camp opposing Costa and Stubb may prove too strong, the publication writes. "We're not convinced at all by changing the rules of the game during the game, because that is what some are proposing… If you do qualified majority voting [to push the accession process forward], there is a very big risk of the process being extremely politicized," the senior EU diplomat said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
