The European Union is set to take a landmark step toward widening its ranks, opening the first stage of membership talks with Ukraine and Moldova after Hungary dropped its veto on Ukraine’s bid to join the bloc.
The formal launch will come this evening at an intergovernmental conference, scheduled after a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Luxembourg.
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The Irish Government has strongly welcomed the move, with EU enlargement due to be a central focus of Ireland’s upcoming EU presidency.
Joining the European Union requires candidate countries to work through around 33 negotiating chapters, aligning national laws where necessary with the EU’s body of law.
Ukraine and Moldova will begin with negotiations on the first cluster of chapters, known as the fundamentals.
That group covers areas including economic criteria, the functioning of democratic institutions and public administration reform.
Progress toward accession depends on unanimous backing from every member state at each stage.
That reality underlines how much of today’s opening is symbolic rather than decisive.
Ukraine’s path into the EU could still take many years to complete.
Moldova, with a far smaller population and public administration, is widely expected to move through the process more quickly.
Even so, Ukraine has won praise from the EU for pressing ahead with reforms while fighting a war against Russia, now in its fifth year.
For Kyiv, the prospect of a European future is seen as a goal for which its people are literally dying.
Viktor Orbán, the pro-Russian former Hungarian prime minister, had repeatedly blocked the opening of negotiations.
But his successor, Péter Magyar, has now removed that obstacle.
