Historic for Ukraine: EU negotiations begin

TT

Published 10.49

 

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Archive photo. Photo: Petros Karadjias/AP/TT

After Hungary's long blockade, Ukraine and Moldova are now beginning their formal negotiations on membership in the EU.

- Incredibly welcome. This should have been done a long time ago, says Swedish Foreign Minister Maria Malmer Stenergard (M) about the start of negotiations taking place in Luxembourg tonight.

For now, only the first so-called negotiation cluster is being opened, for discussions on basic EU demands on, among other things, democracy, freedoms and the legal system.

Sweden wants to quickly get the other five clusters up and running. However, Malmer Stenergard is more skeptical of the proposals that German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has proposed to be able to offer a kind of "trial membership" for the time being.

– It must never be a substitute for true EU membership, says the