EU opens accession talks with Ukraine and Moldova after Hungary lifts veto

The European Union formally launched accession negotiations with Ukraine and Moldova on Monday, opening the longest and most demanding enlargement process in the bloc's history while a war rages on the territory of one candidate and a hybrid campaign targets the other. The intergovernmental conference in Luxembourg marked the ceremonial start of talks that will eventually cover 35 policy chapters, though only five, clustered around the rule of law, fundamental rights, justice, public procurement and financial control, were opened on day one.

Hungary's veto lifted in exchange for frozen funds

The breakthrough came only after Hungary's new prime minister, Péter Magyar, agreed to drop the veto his predecessor Viktor Orbán had maintained for years. Orbán, who lost the April 2026 election, had blocked Ukraine's path at every stage, arguing that Kyiv's governance standards were insufficient and that the EU should not provoke Moscow. Magyar, campaigning on a return to the EU mainstream, struck a deal with Brussels: Budapest would lift its objection in return for the release of more than €16 billion in cohesion funds that the Commission had frozen over rule-of-law concerns. The funds began flowing last week, clearing the final political obstacle to Monday's conference.

The transactional nature of the agreement drew criticism from some member states, who argued that it reduced a strategic geopolitical decision to a budgetary bargaining chip. Others countered that the funds were legally owed to Hungary once the Commission's conditions were met, and that the veto's removal was the necessary price for unity. Either way, the episode underscored how enlargement remains hostage to national vetoes and how the EU's own rule-of-law toolkit can be leveraged in unrelated negotiations.

The negotiating framework: 35 chapters, five opened

Accession negotiations are organised into 35 thematic chapters, ranging from agriculture and taxation to energy and foreign policy. The first cluster, known as the 'fundamentals', is traditionally opened first because it covers the political criteria on which the EU is founded: judiciary and fundamental rights; justice, freedom and security; public procurement; and statistics and financial control. These five chapters were formally opened on Monday. The remaining 30 will be opened and closed in batches over the coming years, each requiring unanimous agreement among the 27 member states at both stages.

The Commission's 2025 progress reports on both countries noted significant legislative alignment but persistent implementation gaps, particularly in judicial independence, anti-corruption enforcement and media freedom. Ukraine's report highlighted the wartime context: many reforms have been passed by decree or accelerated parliamentary procedures, raising questions about their durability. Moldova's report flagged the vulnerability of its institutions to Russian interference, including a documented AI-driven disinformation campaign during the 2025 presidential election.

Security guarantees and the NATO question

For Kyiv, EU membership is explicitly framed as a security guarantee. Taras Kachka, Ukraine's deputy prime minister, told journalists in Luxembourg that Russian aggression against Ukraine and threats against Europe constitute a permanent policy, making faster and comprehensive accession a strategic necessity. The language is deliberate: Ukraine's best security guarantee would be NATO membership, but the Trump administration in Washington has ruled that out for the duration of the conflict, and European allies are unwilling to act without the United States. EU accession, by contrast, is a process the bloc controls.

This creates a paradox. The EU's mutual defence clause under Article 42(7) of the Treaty on European Union is untested and lacks NATO's integrated command structure. Yet for Ukraine, the political anchor of EU membership, and the economic integration that comes with it, is the only Western security architecture currently on offer. Moldova, which is constitutionally neutral, does not seek NATO membership but views EU integration as its primary shield against Russian pressure, which has included energy cutoffs, cyber attacks and the financing of opposition parties.

Diverging views on pace and format

Member states are far from united on how quickly the process should move. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz last month proposed offering Ukraine 'associate membership', a novel status that would grant access to the single market and some EU programmes without full voting rights or budget contributions. The idea was intended to breathe life into stalled peace talks by giving Kyiv a tangible European future without prejudging the final settlement. France and the Netherlands have floated similar workarounds: accelerated integration in specific policy areas, such as energy or digital markets, that stops short of full accession.

These proposals have met resistance from the Commission and from countries already in the queue, notably the Western Balkans, who insist that enlargement must remain merit-based and lead exclusively to full membership. They argue that creating tiered membership categories would undermine the credibility of the process and reward political pressure over reform delivery. The Commission's official position, reiterated by enlargement commissioner Marta Kos in April, is that the existing framework is flexible enough to accommodate accelerated timelines where justified, but that the destination must remain full membership.

Moldova's parallel track

Moldova's path mirrors Ukraine's in structure but differs in substance. Chișinău applied for membership days after Russia's full-scale invasion in 2022 and received candidate status in June of that year, alongside Kyiv. Since then, President Maia Sandu's government has pushed through constitutional reforms, strengthened the anti-corruption prosecution service and aligned energy legislation with the EU acquis. But the country remains fragile: a narrow referendum victory on EU membership in 2024, Russian-backed protests in the breakaway region of Transnistria, and the loss of cheap Russian gas have strained public finances and political cohesion.

The Commission's decision to open negotiations with both countries simultaneously was a deliberate political signal. Separating them would have fed Russian narratives of Western abandonment and complicated the EU's own messaging on the indivisibility of European security. In practice, however, the two tracks will diverge. Moldova's smaller size and peacetime status mean it could technically close chapters faster, but its institutional capacity is thinner. Ukraine's wartime legislation has accelerated alignment in some areas, customs, digital governance, energy synchronisation, while making progress in others, such as judicial appointments or competition policy, nearly impossible.

The rule-of-law benchmark

The choice of the fundamentals cluster as the opening batch is no accident. For the Netherlands, Denmark, Finland and Sweden, progress on rule of law is the prerequisite for any further movement. These countries have blocked chapter openings in previous enlargements, most recently with North Macedonia and Albania, when they judged that legislative changes were not matched by independent enforcement. They will apply the same standard to Ukraine and Moldova, scrutinising not just the laws on the books but the independence of prosecutors, the resilience of anti-corruption bodies and the freedom of the media.

Ukraine's anti-corruption architecture, rebuilt after the 2014 Revolution of Dignity, has survived the war but faces a stress test. The National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) and the High Anti-Corruption Court (HACC) have secured high-profile convictions, yet political interference in appointments persists. The 2025 amendment to the law on the Specialised Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office (SAPO), which expanded the selection commission's parliamentary representation, was criticised by the Venice Commission for weakening independence. Moldova's record is shorter: its Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office was only established in 2023, and its first major cases are still before the courts.