The EU should focus on providing immediate help to Ukraine rather than engaging in “legal debates” about whether to designate the country as a candidate for membership, according to Portugal’s prime minister.
António Costa said in an interview that candidate status — the beginning of an accession process that would take many years — would not solve Ukraine’s urgent problems and risked creating “false expectations”. He feared the EU would only display its divisions over the issue, handing a gift to Russian president Vladimir Putin.
His comments underline the disquiet in some EU capitals about granting candidate status to Kyiv despite the pleas of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who regards a membership path as a guarantee of Ukraine’s sovereignty and an anchor for its recovery. EU leaders are due to decide on the matter at a summit in Brussels on June 23-24.