BRUSSELS: German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has proposed making Ukraine an \u201cassociate member\u201d of the EU without voting rights, while Kyiv goes through the lengthy process of joining fully, a letter seen by AFP Thursday said.<\/p>\n
The plan \u2014 first floated by Merz with EU counterparts last month \u2014 would see Ukraine\u2019s leader attend the bloc\u2019s summit but not be able to cast a vote.<\/p>\n
Kyiv would have a representative at the top table of the EU\u2019s executive, the European Commission, and non-voting members of the European parliament.<\/p>\n
Under the proposal, outlined by Merz in a letter to EU chiefs Ursula von der Leyen and Antonio Costa, the bloc\u2019s mutual assistance clause would apply to Ukraine, and it could benefit from parts of the EU\u2019s budget.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is obvious that we will not be able to complete the accession process shortly, given the countless hurdles as well as the political complexities of ratification processes,\u201d Merz wrote.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat I envisage is a political solution that brings Ukraine substantially closer to the European Union and its core institutions immediately.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ukraine is pushing to speed up its bid to join the 27-nation European Union as it fights Russia\u2019s invasion on the battlefield.<\/p>\n
Kyiv\u2019s progress was blocked by Hungary\u2019s nationalist former premier Viktor Orban, but his ouster by rival Peter Magyar has raised hopes Kyiv could now move forward.<\/p>\n
Merz\u2019s plan could face skepticism from both Germany\u2019s EU counterparts and from Ukraine.<\/p>\n
Kyiv is desperate to keep up momentum toward joining the bloc and fears that any suggested interim solutions will see it stranded in a halfway house.<\/p>\n
The German leader insisted he still wants Ukraine to eventually become a \u201cfull member\u201d and urged launching \u201call negotiation clusters\u201d immediately.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt would not be a membership light,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n
Ukraine sees membership of the EU as vital to its future recovery and security, as the United States has essentially closed the door on it joining NATO.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
BRUSSELS: German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has proposed making Ukraine an \u201cassociate member\u201d of the EU without voting rights, while Kyiv goes through the lengthy process of joining fully, a letter seen by AFP Thursday said. The plan \u2014 first floated by Merz with EU counterparts last month \u2014 would see Ukraine\u2019s leader attend the bloc\u2019s …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":98079,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-98060","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98060","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=98060"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98060\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":98081,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98060\/revisions\/98081"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/98079"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=98060"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=98060"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=98060"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}