Candidate status for Ukraine: chances and challenges

Mykhailo Pashkov, co-director of the Razumkov Centre’s Foreign Relations and International Security Programmes, spoke on the upcoming June EU summit, at which they will consider the issue of granting Ukraine the status of a candidate for EU membership. This will be a moment of truth, a symbolic opportunity for Brussels at the most difficult moment of the war to prove solidarity with the country that is fighting for its European choice.

Kyiv has noticeably stepped up its political and diplomatic campaign to lobby for the EU candidate status. President Zelenskyy is holding a series of relevant negotiations with the leaders of the EU countries. A government delegation has been formed to visit the capitals of the most “problematic” EU countries. Recently, the speaker of the Ukrainian parliament was in the German capital with a similar mission.

For Ukraine, acquiring the status of an EU membership candidate is important, on the one hand, because it puts an end to strategic uncertainty in relations with the EU, formalises Kyiv's European integration course, and is essentially a sentence to the Kremlin’s plans for the so-called “forced reincarnation” of the post-Soviet space. On the other hand, the EUcandidacy is an impulse for internal transformations and a moral and political incentive for citizens of Ukraine who defend their European future.

Mykhailo Pashkov

Co-Director, Foreign Relations and International Security Programmes


Born in 1958 in Roslavl, Smolensk oblast, Russia

Education:

Smolensk Institute of Pedagogy, Faculty of the Russian Language and Literature (1979)

Moscow Institute of Youth, Faculty of Journalism (1986)

Kyiv Institute of Political Science and Public Administration (1991)

Ph. D. in Philosophy; the author of more than 50 publications

1979 – 1989 — worked at different positions in district, regional and republican newspapers in Russia and Moldova

1991 – 1994 — worked in scientific institutions of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine

1994 – 1998 — Diplomatic Service at the Embassy of Ukraine in the Russian Federation

Since December 1999 — Razumkov Centre's Leading Expert

Diplomatic Rank: First Secretary. Most recent position in state structures — Chief Consultant, Analytical Service of Ukraine's NSDC Staff

(044) 206-85-08

pashkov@razumkov.org.ua