Europe must send a message by fast-tracking Ukraine for EU membership

Europe must send a message by fast - Europe, finally moving seriously toward Ukrainian membership in the European Union, should now accelerate the process dramatically and make one thing unmistakably clear to Moscow: Ukraine will become a member of the EU, period, and sooner rather than later.

After years of hesitation, all EU member states recently agreed to open the first detailed accession talks with Ukraine and Moldova, covering democracy, rule of law, and institutional standards.

The breakthrough signals that Europe is beginning to understand the geopolitical reality created by Russia’s invasion. Ukraine is no longer merely a buffer state, an aid recipient or a candidate country trapped in procedural limbo. Rather, it has become central to Europe’s future security, identity, and democratic purpose.

Europe deserves real credit for stepping up when many doubted it could. Since President Trump curtailed American military aid to Ukraine, European governments have accelerated the flow of money and weapons eastward while tightening sanctions on Russia. The continent has shown more resilience, seriousness, and strategic coherence than many expected. Russia’s staggering battlefield losses are now a genuine problem for Vladimir Putin.

Ukraine is the greatest European military success in a century or more.

For years, EU enlargement functioned primarily as a technocratic exercise. Expansion was about harmonizing standards, enforcing institutional reforms, reducing corruption, liberalizing economies, and forcing aspiring members to conform to Brussels’ democratic and regulatory norms. The process was slow because Europe believed it had the luxury of time — and didn’t much care.

But the European Union today is under real strain. Demographic decline, Brexit, political fragmentation, populism, economic anxiety, migration pressures, and a concerted attack by Trump and his cabal have shaken confidence in the European project. The old assumption has collapsed, that Europe’s role was simply to manage prosperity through regulation and bureaucracy.

On the other hand, Ukraine is not simply another candidate country waiting patiently outside Brussels with paperwork in hand. Ukrainians are fighting and dying under the banner of joining the liberal democratic West, at a moment when much of the democratic world itself seems uncertain about its own values.

Europe is right to insist on standards, transparency, institutional reform, and anti-corruption measures. But the accession process now has to be reconceived as a strategic necessity rather than an endless bureaucratic probation. Ukraine should be fast-tracked into the European Union, to send a message both to Russia and to Trump.

The danger today is not only military but also psychological exhaustion. Ukrainians have been told for years that Europe is their future while simultaneously hearing European officials privately suggest that actual membership may not come for a decade or more. That gap between rhetoric and reality is corrosive. Polls already suggest some Ukrainians, especially younger ones exhausted by war and uncertainty, are beginning to lose faith in Europe’s promises. Europe must not allow that to happen.

Part of the equation should be realization that Europe now needs Ukraine almost as much as Ukraine needs Europe. Ukraine’s army is now among the most battle-tested in the world. Its drone warfare capabilities are redefining modern warfare. European militaries openly acknowledge they are learning from Ukraine in real time. Ukraine is no longer merely a recipient of security assistance — it is becoming a producer of European security. As an EU member, today’s Ukraine would instantly become Europe’s leading military power.

This slots into another major geopolitical earthquake that Europeans are beginning to confront. Eighty-one years after World War II, Europe still depends overwhelmingly on the U.S. for protection against Russia, a country whose population is only modestly larger than Germany’s and whose economy is on par with that of Italy. EU dependency upon the U.S. has therefore become increasingly absurd.

Given Trump’s hostility toward NATO and wavering support for Ukraine, virtually all major European powers are now waking up to these facts and rebuilding their military capabilities. Germany is rearming. Poland expanding, France pushing strategic autonomy. Britain, after diminishing its armed forces shockingly over decades, suddenly finds itself scrambling to rebuild military capacity with real urgency.

There is another reason Europe should move quickly: For the sake of future deterrence, Russia must be made to suffer consequences for its decision to invade. Putin launched this war partly to prevent Ukraine from permanently escaping Russia’s sphere of influence. Accelerated EU membership for Ukraine should be understood partly as the price Russia pays for its aggression.

Indeed, if negotiations eventually require painful Ukrainian territorial concessions in parts of the occupied east, rapid integration into the European Union would help compensate for those losses politically, economically, and psychologically. It would help Ukraine make that choice. A sovereign democratic Ukraine, anchored irreversibly inside Europe, would represent a historic strategic defeat for Putin even if Russia clings to fragments of occupied territory.

Polls already suggest some Ukrainians, especially younger ones exhausted by war and uncertainty, are beginning to lose faith in Europe’s promises. Europe must not allow that to happen.

The European Union often struggles to explain what it stands for beyond regulation and procedure. Ukraine offers Europe a chance to rediscover strategic and moral purpose at the same time. Millions of Ukrainians are risking their lives because they believe Europe still represents liberal democracy, sovereignty, pluralism and freedom under law.

Days ago, a Russian drone struck an apartment building in Galați, Romania. For one of us, a former Romanian prime minister who help negotiate the country’s EU accession, and for the other, who began his career as a foreign correspondent there and covered Ukraine’s 1990s drive for independence, the incident highlights Ukraine’s urgency for Europe. Romania, a frontline state, waited many long years for accession. This must not happen to Ukraine.

Mihai Razvan Ungureanu is the former prime minister and foreign minister of Romania. Dan Perry is the former editor in chief of the Associated Press in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.