EU Summit navigates Ukraine accession, Russian sanctions
With the NATO summit in The Hague concluded and its minimalist final declaration issued, most leaders opted for the two-hour (177 km) highway drive to Brussels.
The EU summit is taking place there today and tomorrow, June 26–27, marking the last under the Polish presidency. In total, 23 of the 27 EU members are also in NATO. They'll meet for two days in Brussels with leaders from Austria, Cyprus, Ireland, and Malta, the EU's only four neutral countries.
However, the EU summit's agenda for today and tomorrow is packed – with Iran being a particularly prominent point, as the EU aims to maintain its relevance there.
As expected, several key political decisions are also on the table, particularly concerning Ukraine. When Poland took over the rotating six-month presidency of the Council of the European Union with much fanfare at the beginning of the year, its stated goal was for official EU accession talks with Ukraine and Moldova to begin by mid-2025.
Polish diplomats even confidently expressed hope that more than one of the six negotiation clusters would open during their presidency. It's fair to say things haven't gone as planned.
Unanimity is required to open each "cluster" or negotiation package, and Hungary has persistently blocked any action in this regard, even organizing a consultative referendum on Ukraine's (and thus Moldova's) EU accession – an initiative widely criticized in other capitals.
This summit is something of a "last chance" to unblock the situation, but few diplomats believe Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán will pay it much heed. Some think things might move on this front after the July summit, when Denmark takes over the EU presidency.
However, as this has increasingly become a domestic political issue in Hungary, most believe Budapest will continue to reject progress until the April 2026 parliamentary elections.
The key question now is whether Ukraine and Moldova should be separated in the accession process. On the other hand, the EU also wants to offer Moldova a reward, with the first EU-Moldova summit set for early July in Chișinău and parliamentary elections expected to be highly tense in September.
Regarding Ukraine and Moldova, the draft summit declaration states that "the European Council looks forward to the next steps in the accession process, in line with the merit-based approach, and with the opening of discussion clusters when conditions are met."
For now, the most likely candidate to show concrete progress by the end of June is Montenegro, which expects to conclude a series of chapters on June 27.
Sanctions against Russia
As for the "EU enlargement impulse" that Eurocrats have propagated so often in previous years, if there's one area where Hungary – and increasingly, Slovakia – might be more willing to advance, it's that of sanctions against Russia.
For most EU officials, the most important thing is to secure an extension of all previous sanctions:
This includes all Russian assets frozen within the bloc, totaling over 200 billion euros.
Hungary had been toying with the idea of not approving the extension of the previous agreement back in January.
Regarding the 18th sanctions package to be discussed, most elements have already been agreed upon at the diplomatic level.
European officials and diplomats are trying to understand the 18th package of sanctions against Russia. Ursula von der Leyen's proposal was to include a plan to lower the price cap on Russian oil and thereby limit Vladimir Putin's fossil fuel revenues.
However, European powers failed to reach an agreement at the G7 this month, and given that it's a measure designed by the G7, it seemed unlikely to be implemented. Then, last week, von der Leyen suggested that the high price of oil (due to the Israel-Iran conflict, which caused crude oil prices to rise) meant Putin was already losing huge revenues, and thus there was no pressure to lower the cap.
Defense Map
At their Thursday summit in Brussels, EU leaders will request the European Commission and the EU's top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, to present a "roadmap" for implementing all defense initiatives agreed upon to date. However, they won't mention new funding options. The new 17-page draft of the leaders' final declaration, dated June 20, now specifies that they will review progress at the October meeting, where they will "discuss the next steps in implementing" the agreed measures to enhance the bloc's defense readiness by 2030.
Translation by Iurie Tataru
