Mat Whatley is a former U.K. army officer, who was head of the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission in Donetsk, Ukraine, and a senior manager with the EU Monitoring Mission to Georgia in the Caucasus. He’s the managing director at Okapi Train.
U.S. President Donald Trump has forced a binary choice on Ukraine’s supporters.
His aggressive push to end the war, at the cost of major Ukrainian concessions, has fueled instability in Kyiv. And in response, Europe has hardened its support, spurring unrealistic policymaking that leaves little room for nuance in the gulf between Brussels and the White House.
As a result, many within the bloc are now calling for Ukraine’s accession to be radically fast-tracked, following the European Council’s 2022 decision to grant it candidate status. Moreover, anyone who subjects these promises to even the mildest scrutiny now risks being accused of failing to take Russia’s aggression seriously, or even of aiding Moscow.
However, admitting Ukraine into the EU presents an immense challenge — one that would fully reshape the bloc’s budgetary structure and risk unity, given the country would immediately become the largest recipient of EU funds.
These concerns were widespread within the bloc’s establishment not that long ago. It was in 2023 that former European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker remarked Ukraine wasn’t ready for accession due to rule-of-law and corruption challenges, saying: “Anyone who has had anything to do with Ukraine knows that this is a country that is corrupt at all levels of society.”
And despite much reform, this problem stubbornly persists. A 2024 poll by the country’s National Agency on Corruption Prevention found that 90 percent of Ukrainians believe corruption is still widespread, with most saying it’s getting worse. More Ukrainians now view corruption as a greater threat than Russia’s military aggression.
Even more concerning, the country’s anti-corruption agencies are now widely seen as tools of political convenience too. Semen Kryvonos, who’s been leading the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) since 2023, for instance, owes a political debt to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s Chief of Staff Andriy Yermak for landing a top post at a state regulator two years prior.
Critics argue Yermak has seized on martial law as a cover to tighten his grip on the levers of power and politicize state institutions, using them to pursue opponents and insulate allies. So, when a NABU investigation implicating him was quietly dropped without explanation — his brother was allegedly caught selling political positions and access to the President’s Office — many viewed it as confirmation of selective justice.
Even more troubling, Yermak’s deputy was under investigation while at the same time retaining oversight over NABU’s operations. That case, too, was dismissed.
Of course, like Trump, the previous U.S. administration harbored concerns about corruption in Ukraine as well. But wary of handing ammunition to Republicans ahead of the 2024 election, it chose not to raise them publicly — and that strategy backfired. Keeping quiet only reinforced MAGA suspicions of a cover-up, and turned Ukraine aid into a partisan fault line. Ironically, it also helped create the conditions for drastic action once Trump was elected.
Now, with a similar gulf in approaches opening transnationally, Europe would be wise to avoid widening the divide.
This is how Juncker knew anything but a drawn-out process for Ukraine was a false promise: The country simply doesn’t meet the criteria in several crucial accession chapters. Instead, membership is being offered as a means of securing long-term stability and anchoring Ukraine to the West.
Crucially, however, if this fails — or the process prolongs indefinitely — the bloc also risks leaving the country in limbo and even more vulnerable than before, ultimately defeating the offer’s purpose.
But quickly admitting Ukraine without reform would repeat past mistakes — just on a larger scale. For example, Montenegro, a candidate country since 2010, remains far from membership due to persistent corruption concerns, as the EU has become stricter after admitting Bulgaria and Romania in 2007 despite warnings from the European Court of Auditors.
Ukraine’s population is more than 60 times that of Montenegro, and its prewar GDP was 36 times greater. This magnifies the scale and complexity of the corruption challenge. Reform could take decades. Yet, in the meantime, Brussels continues to make promises it can’t realistically keep.
Additionally, a quick accession would further erode trust in the bloc at a moment when Europe is aspiring to play a more assertive geopolitical role. Ukrainians may well lose faith in the EU, just as many Serbians have after 15 years in limbo — by 2022, 43 percent of the country had already lost hope of ever joining the bloc. And many of Serbia’s Balkan neighbors have also started questioning whether Brussels is truly serious in expansion anymore.
Simply put, throwing caution to the wind in Ukraine’s case would inflame the frustrations of those who already feel strung along.
Added to which, rushing through the process with Ukraine risks importing systemic, large-scale corruption into the bloc and weakening it from within, as well as worsening friction among members. Hungary has repeatedly paralyzed EU decision-making in retaliation for withholding its funds over rule-of-law concerns. And if those standards are seen as flexible in Ukraine’s case, it would only add grit to already strained relations.
At a time of growing Russian aggression and an increasingly unpredictable White House, weakening the EU’s internal standards for the sake of a symbolic gesture serves neither the bloc nor Ukraine. The path forward requires neither knee-jerk reactions nor naive optimism but steady, conditional support for Ukraine’s war effort — strengthening its defenses and ensuring it enters any future negotiations from a position of maximum leverage.
Offering the protective veil of EU membership is irresponsible if it remains hanging on the peg.
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