It will take years for Ukraine to become an EU member

BEING A MEMBER of the European Union is, like marriage, a binary thing: either you are or you are not. Unlike marriage, little romance is involved in getting there. Ukraine got a taste of this in 2013 when it negotiated an “association agreement” with the bloc, a deal to keep both sides sweet while they mulled a closer union. The document came in at 2,135 pages. It included 44 uses of the term inter alia and 12 mutatis mutandises. One annexe sets out the quality of paper (“not less than 25 g/m²”) and size (“210 × 297mm; a tolerance of up to minus 5mm or plus 8mm in the length may be allowed”) to be used in certain official correspondence. Even by the standards of pre-nups, it was charmless.