At a meeting of their ambassadors to the EU on Wednesday 10 January, followed by a lunch with the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, on Thursday 11 January, ten Member States expressed their surprise at the European Commission’s delay in starting the screening process for Ukraine and Moldova, a senior European diplomat told a group of journalists, including EUROPE, on Monday 15 January.
On 14 December, the European Council decided to open accession negotiations with Ukraine and Moldova (see EUROPE 13314/1).
“We encourage the Commission to immediately start the process, which has not started yet and should already have started”, stressed this diplomat.
At the presentation of the progress reports from the candidate countries for EU membership in November, a senior EU official explained that once it had been decided to open accession negotiations, the screening process could begin immediately.
“The Commission’s Directorate General (DG NEAR) was ready to start immediately, and Ukraine was also ready, but nothing happened. Why? You have to ask Commissioner”, explained the diplomat, pointing the finger at the Hungarian Enlargement Commissioner, Olivér Várhelyi.
The senior diplomat also expressed the hope that work would begin on the first Intergovernmental Conference and the negotiating framework. “The ambition is to have them by March during the Belgian Presidency of the Council of the EU”, he explained. “It won’t be easy because of one Member State and one Commissioner from the same Member State”, he warned in a thinly veiled criticism of Hungary and Commissioner Várhelyi.
The screening process - which may take around a year in comparison with previous processes - can be carried out in parallel with the Intergovernmental Conference.
Asked on Monday 15 January about the start of the process, European Commission spokeswoman Ana Pisonero explained that the Commission was “currently considering when to launch work on the next steps, in line with the conclusions of the European Council”, adding that the Commission was in the process of organising itself and that “a little bit of time” was needed to see how the next steps would be organised. (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant)