“We have a deal,” European Council President Charles Michel announced on Thursday. Then, to underscore the inclusivity of that first-person plural pronoun, he added that all twenty-seven European Union (EU) countries had agreed on a fifty-billion-euro aid package to Ukraine through 2027. The breakthrough follows weeks of resistance from Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. It
The European Council’s recent decision to open accession negotiations with Ukraine was a momentous moment both for Kyiv and the European Union. Now the serious work begins. Ukraine’s EU story is a decade in the making. Ukraine’s European aspirations were a driving factor behind the 2013-14 Revolution of Dignity. Since Russia’s full-scale invasion began in
“Ukraine is Europe!” Hundreds of thousands of protesters shouted this phrase a decade ago in Kyiv’s main public square, after then-Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych refused to sign an association agreement with the European Union (EU). On Thursday, the European Council echoed the same idea back from Brussels when it decided to open EU accession talks
At the risk of making too obvious of a point, 2019 is not 2023. In 2019, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen entered office promising a “geopolitical Commission.” Since then, the European Union (EU) has faced one geopolitical crisis after another—a pandemic, a war in Europe, and intensifying energy and trade insecurities—and has embraced
