EU will study “different options” to give Ukraine a European perspective

The European Union (EU) will study “different options” to specify the European perspective that is going to be given to Ukraine, but with the awareness that an eventual accession “it will take years” and that the urgency is to help him face the Russian invasion.

This is the message underlined this Friday by the French Secretary of State, Clément Beaune, at the end of an informal two-day meeting of those responsible for European Affairs of the Twenty in Arles (south-eastern France), focused on the war in Ukraine.

Beaune explained at a press conference together with the Vice President of the European Commission for Institutional Relations, Maros Sefcovic, that the debate on what these options are, which the Heads of State and Government will discuss at the Versailles summit, has not been closed. next March 10 and 11.

It is, he specified, “give a european perspective” to Ukraine to finalize their “european aspiration” and that will need to be discussed with the authorities in Kiev, but also with other countries in the region, such as Moldova and Georgia, to “find the ways of this association, of this possible adherence”.

However, the French Secretary of State for European Affairs, whose country holds the rotating Presidency of the EU this semester, insisted that what unites all the member countries is “the urgency” of aid to Ukraine to face the Russian invasion.

An aid that, as he recalled, is both humanitarian and military with the approval for the first time of the use of community funds for the shipment of military equipment, even of a lethal nature, and on which there is total unanimity.

Sefcovic emphasized that the Twenty-seven have to send a signal to Ukraine to tell it that “it is part of the European peoples”which will be “a future EU member state“, although for that”there is a necessary process” and what you want to specify “ASAP”.

But, like Beaune, he agreed that the most urgent thing is to provide assistance, stating that “the EU will continue to support their fight for freedom” and making sure that sanctions against Russia “will apply without fail” and “very rigorously.”

The European commissioner was convinced that “the Kremlin has failed in its will to sow discord in the EU”.

Among the member countries there are different positions on how to deal with Ukraine’s aspirations to join the EU. This issue is on the agenda for next week’s Versailles community summit, where the management of war refugees and how to reduce economic dependence on Russia will also have to be discussed.

Beaune indicated that in Arles the representatives of the States showed their willingness to show their solidarity with those who are hosting them.

“There has not been a single countryhe claimed– who wanted, not even implicitly, to withdraw from European solidarity”.