It will take years for Ukraine to become an EU member
Better start working on it now
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.
This article appeared in the Europe section of the print edition under the headline “Of bureaucrats and lovers”
From the April 2nd 2022 edition
Discover stories from this section and more in the list of contents
Explore the editionDiscover more
Ursula von der Leyen has a new doctrine for handling the hard right
The boss of the European Commission embarks on a second term
Marine Le Pen spooks the bond markets
She threatens to bring down the French government, but also faces a possible ban from politics
The maths of Europe’s military black hole
It needs to spend to defend, but voters may balk
Ukraine’s warriors brace for a Kremlin surge in the south
Vladimir Putin’s war machine is pushing harder and crushing Ukrainian morale
Vladimir Putin fires a new missile to amplify his nuclear threats
The attack on Ukraine is part of a new era of missile warfare
A rise in antisemitism puts Europe’s liberal values to the test
The return of Europe’s oldest scourge