EU sets roadmap for enlargement, Kallas warns of Russian sabotage

The European Commission has presented the “Enlargement Package,” the document that sets a roadmap for the accession to the Union of candidate countries. This is reported by AGI and Sky TG24, which cite respectively the Commission’s factsheet on the package and the statements of the EU High Representative for Foreign Policy. This is a story that this morning’s edition had not yet reported.

Among the countries involved in the document are Ukraine, Moldova, Montenegro and Albania. For Ukraine, the negotiating path has already been launched on a substantial part of the process: the country has formally opened four of the six planned negotiating clusters and 24 of the 33 overall negotiating chapters.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen commented on the presentation, stating that the Union is building “a more complete and stronger Union” — Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission.

Alongside the enlargement announcement, EU High Representative for Foreign Policy Kaja Kallas addressed the issue of security, signaling an increase in sabotage incidents and so-called gray zone activities attributed to Russia against European countries. Kallas added an assessment of the prospects for the Ukrainian conflict: “little hope of an immediate end to Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine” — Kaja Kallas, EU High Representative for Foreign Policy.

The two statements — von der Leyen’s on enlargement and Kallas’s on security — come within the same institutional context and outline a two-track picture: on one hand, the opening of an accession prospect for candidate countries, and on the other, a warning about a threat the Union itself considers to be growing.

On the same day, the General Court of the European Union upheld most of the restrictive measures adopted by the Council against the Russian Maritime Register of Shipping, the Russian state ship classification and certification body, rejecting the appeal filed by the body against the sanctions. This is also reported by Sky TG24. The ruling confirms, on a judicial level, the same line of firmness toward Moscow recalled by Kallas on the political level.

The enlargement package does not, based on the available material, set an accession date for any of the candidate countries: the roadmap concerns the negotiating path, not its conclusion. For Ukraine, two of the six negotiating clusters and nine of the 33 overall chapters remain open, indicating that the process, while advanced, is not yet concluded despite the acceleration announced today by Brussels.

It remains to be seen, in the coming months, whether the pace of opening Ukrainian negotiating chapters will continue at the same speed, and whether Kallas’s concerns about Russian sabotage will be matched by concrete security measures from member states.