Thread by @ichbinilya

About Ukraine's EU aspirations — which I fully support, as do most Ukrainians! — important to understand how arduous the process is, and for good reason. Read this whole story, but key bits in next tweets:
nytimes.com/2022/03/04/wor…

"There are 35 chapters of accession negotiations, each relating to a policy area in which the candidate country is being asked to make changes — both judicial and practical — to align itself with the European Union standards."

"Work on specific chapters can stall for years, and any progress is subject to a constant monitoring of the standards of the candidate country’s court and judicial systems, as well as the quality of its democratic institutions."

"Those include rule of law matters such as independent judges, removing corruption and protecting a free and vibrant press. Several current E.U. members, foremost Hungary and Poland but also Bulgaria and Romania, are doing poorly on some of those fronts."

That last point is important. The EU has been roundly criticized by political scientists, rule of law specialists, activists, and ordinary citizens for failing to hold Poland and Hungary to account on their rule-of-law backsliding.

And those are EU members which took years and years to join. Ukraine has made huge progress on many fronts since the Euromaidan uprising, but if EU membership is to be meaningful, it must be a club of real, functioning, non-corrupt democracies. Lots of work still to go.

Gotta win this war first, though.

See also this. euractiv.com/section/europe…