Diplomats believe Brussels needs to formulate a more ‘realistic’ plan amid concerns over lack of support
Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president, wants his country to gain membership of the bloc by next year Credit: Maksym Kishka/Frontliner/Getty Images
Mar 4, 2026
By Joe Barnes
Joe Barnes is the Telegraph’s Brussels Correspondent. He focuses on European politics and defence, and has covered the Ukraine war and its peace negotiations extensively. He has also covered the US elections from Washington, DC.
France and Germany are set to block Ukraine’s push for a fast-track entry to the European Union.
The European Commission presented a proposal for Kyiv to join forces with the bloc at a dinner on Wednesday night organised by the two countries.
But ambassadors for Paris and Berlin told their counterparts that Brussels needed to formulate a more “realistic” plan for Ukraine’s accession, diplomatic sources told The Telegraph.
Officials in the two capitals, both staunch allies of Ukraine, are opposed to the quick-fire plan because it does not have the full support of member states and could ultimately see Kyiv fall victim to a wider argument over enlargement of the bloc.
Ursula von der Leyen, the commission’s president, had hoped to welcome Ukraine into the bloc through a “membership lite” scheme.
Her vision for an accelerated pathway offered Kyiv membership without the benefits, such as EU funds or voting rights, which would come at a later date.
The plan was largely designed to accommodate a 2027 accession date, which has been mooted during the US-mediated peace talks between Ukraine and Russia.
Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president, has also said he wants to achieve membership by next year as a key security guarantee.
But France and Germany fear the plans, which require unanimous approval, will in any case be vetoed by Hungary.
Their officials also believe Ukraine has not completed sufficient reforms to root out corruption, which could slow down further if membership were granted, and set a dangerous precedent.
Hungarian opposition
The fast-tracked strategy was presented to the EU’s 27 national ambassadors by Björn Seibert, Mrs von der Leyen’s chief of staff, on Wednesday.
But the proposed phased-in membership has been widely rejected behind the scenes in Brussels.
“I don’t think many of us really ever liked it as a plan,” an EU diplomat told The Telegraph.
Before the talks, French and German officials signalled they would seek to make a counter-proposal that would have support from the bloc’s member states.
“There is a tentative attempt by France and Germany to find a good model for Ukraine to join the EU,” a second diplomat said.
“We have to anchor Kyiv in the EU, that’s a given, but there’s a second reality we must take into account: any proposal must be accepted by the member states.”
Accession to the EU is considered a merit-based system, with 36 steps to complete before the process can be finalised.
Even then, before the process can be finalised, it needs to be unanimously signed off by the bloc’s member states.
Viktor Orban, the Hungarian prime minister, has been the most vocal opponent of scrapping the system for Ukraine, branding it a “declaration of war” against his country.
Officials in Brussels and some EU capitals have been attempting to find legal loopholes to circumvent any vetoes by Mr Orban, who is considered a close ally of Vladimir Putin, the Russian president.
Putin peace talks manoeuvres
Paris and Berlin have told other capitals they will attempt to broker a compromise after the dinner.
The commission is still desperately hanging onto its proposals, arguing that a special approach is needed for Kyiv to prevent it from being abandoned after any ceasefire is agreed.
However, sources have indicated that Mrs von der Leyen could instruct officials to explore other plans.
It usually takes an average of nine years for a country to join the EU.
Ukraine, which was granted candidate status in 2022, will complete it in five years if the process is finalised by next year.
Mr Zelensky has urged EU member states not to block his country’s accession over fears that Putin could use peace talks down the line to veto the process, as he has done for Kyiv’s hopes of Nato membership.
While hosting EU leaders in Kyiv on the fourth anniversary of the war, Ukraine’s president said 2027 was “very important for us and – I hope – doable. So that Putin cannot block our membership for decades”.
France and Germany again.
Fucking cunts.
They kowtow to a piss-ass ruZZia-owned nazi – again.
Sick fucks.
Oebanistan does not belong in the EU. Even if they miraculously get rid of OrbanaZi, they are still nazi sympathisers who want to steal land off Ukraine.
This is a disgrace.
OrbanaZi has two powerful backers : putler and krasnov.
Ukraine has no powerful backers.
Comment from :
Ivan Kuzyk
In a small way Putin has won. He has ripped the masks from the faces of the major European leaders showing that they lack the courage and the wisdom to act boldly or decisively . He has shown us that they are shop keepers, not statesmen. By allowing Orban to dictate terms for the entire EU is but one illustration of this. After four years of war, the EU cannot even embrace Ukraine as a partner. It is shameful. Europe’s decline is real and is self-inflicted; due, primarily, to mediocrity at the top. Show us a DeGaulle, an Adenauer or a Churchill worthy of these times. In Venezuela and Iran, Trump -for all his flaws – is demonstrating what genuine World powers are capable of. For years, the Iranians sized up US leaders and decided that calling for the death of the US carried no real risk to the regime. They did so believing that, given the Western mindset, there were no consequences for such rhetoric or their adventures across the region. Trump, however, has shown them and others like them what raw power is and that upsetting regional and global stability comes at a cost. We don’t know where this will end but, it has put anti-Western regimes like Iran, Cuba and Venezuela on notice.
Trevor Smallwood
The EU is intensely bureaucratic and this just looks like the wheels grinding very finely. Once they get a format that deals with Ukraine’s circumstances I expect they’ll gain admission.
Adam Turner
You’d’ve hoped that after a peace settlement, the EU would’ve done the decent thing and helped (the remaining ~80% of) Ukraine secure membership and gain article 42 protection from further invasion.
Russia’s army is severely weakened (60–70%) by the Ukraine war. Germany’s defence spending alone will match hers by 2029 (~ US$150 billion), so she’s no conventional threat. Providing there’s opposition. (Hybrid wise, her tech also lags the West by about 15 years, so that threat’s been exaggerated too.)
The EU as a whole probably wants to minimise its security guarantee obligations. Typical politicking, typical cynicism. Unfortunately, all nations do it.
Let’s hope solution can be worked out with robust security guarantees.
Piggy Boon
“It’s our right to join NATO” (Zelenski 2022). Now its a non-entity
When AfD and National Rally win their elections – there won’t be much of the EU either.
GRAHAM REEVE
Kick out the bloodsucking parasite Hungary and accept Ukraine instead. Simple.
Vicki Lester
Orban is Putin’s creature anyway.
Hilary Deighton
What is wrong with these people? I hold no brief for the E.U. and am delighted to be out of it, but don’t they realise what a marvellous asset Ukraine is? Perhaps there needs,if anything, to be a new organisation with only sensible countries (we know which ones to avoid), no stagnant and corrupt bureaucracy and no fantasies, just sensible mutually beneficial trading policies and agreements on security.
Hilary Deighton
Ukraine is set to become a powerhouse. I can understand why the symbolism of being part of something that seems to be definitively Europe might appeal to Ukraine and sympathise with that in the circumstances, but it would seem to me to make more sense for them in the longer run to build on relationships with individual countries, particularly the Eastern and Northern countries with dynamism and clarity (excluding certain very bad neighbours, obviously) rather than the whole sclerotic bloc. We, of course, already have links and relationships with Ukraine to be built on, and that is to our mutual good, or will be once the worst government in British history has fallen into the dust never to re-emerge. It remains France’s and Germany’s standard folly to run away from real life in order to protect yesterday’s interests. Again.
Wilhelm Goat
Ukraine has a better case for joining than the vast majority of the old eastern bloc expansion countries at the turn of the century.
Steve Chilvers
Germany doesn’t want to fund Ukraine’s accession – and is desperate to restore Russian gas via Nordstream asap; French (and Polish) farmers won’t allow their agricultural imports. End of story.
Like NATO, the EU is the “sick man of Europe”. It lacks the courage and the foresight to fully utilize its great potential. Instead, it succumbs to petty yet excessive and unreasonable beauracracy that stifles its development in a fast-paced world. Where other entities grasp any opportunity they can get and form them into tools of progress, the EU sits like a fat blob on a sled, trying to slide down a slope long cleared of any snow. Just like the individual member states, it has no clear leadership, just a bunch of hotdog salesmen who scatter in fright by the slightest bit of noise while tolerating two numbnuts that spit into the very kettle of hotdogs they feed from. If the EU keeps this up, it will slowly die and wither away. You can’t be progressive and efficient with a bloated book of word salat paragraphs and hot rhetorical gasses.
How is Orban’s demise looking? Will he be voted out?