Are there? Please point to them.
Are you being deliberately crass?
Another treaty had to be negotiated specifically to get the UK out of the EU. Are you aware of how long that took?
Yes things might be changed. Possibly under provisions laid out in the treaties referred to earlier. Lengthy and convoluted provisions, no doubt.
Are you deliberately picking fights with everyone who disagrees with you?
Look, if the EU decides to take emergency actions to try to help Ukraine, I’m sure they can move pretty quick. Nobody justifies rapid bureaucratic maneuvers like bureaucrats.
Oh, YOU’RE sure. Well, that should fix it all, eh?
I’m not the only one who has stated that it can’t happen pretty quick, and noted why. But if you’re sure they can nonetheless move pretty quick…
No. Just the people who are not au fait with the reality of the EU and seem to be under an impression that some magical thinking can make something else happen.
And they are picking fights with me. So there! 
That was a direct quote. I didn’t edit anything.
As @GagHalfrunt has clarified, there are mechanisms for change. They are not swift. I had not had chance to check this when I was drafting my post and edited it to say things MIGHT be changed.
But I’m done with this now. Some people give an impression of not knowing about or wanting to acknowledge there are treaties and processes that cannot just be shortcut, despite having been shown that they are there and they matter and must be adhered to.
Perhaps someone should excise this whole EU can/can’t move fast bit of the thread to its own thread (@gracchus ?) and we can get back to actually discussing the invasion.
I Just scrolled through people piling on @anothernewbbaccount’s takes and take your post as one of the many opportunities to scratch my head. Nothing personal. I could have taken many other to chime in.
If someone thinks that the steps already taken, the statements made, the decisions made and the measures prepared do not signal commitment, then I fear nothing could convince them of a real committment. This is going to no real Scotsman territory.
The rule of law was already mentioned.
And sadly, there are some on this board who obviously think “the law” can be changed easily and quickly.
The thing is, people tend to focus on the “law” part, while the phrase “the rule of law” in entirety carries the civilizational importance. The German compositum is “Rechtsstaatlichkeit”, and Staatlichkeit means the condition (as in conditio sine qua non) of statehood.
I don’t know if this explanation helps or not.
But I also hope to have made it clear where I stand. For the EU to keep existing, it cannot change the rules for membership now as apparently demanded by Ukraine, and cannot even send many more positive signals towards an EU membership for Ukraine. What already was done is absolutely amazing.
Yes, most definitely and positively, yes.
Oh no. Please don’t. Just let it stop already.
I can’t keep up with two major crises in two different topics. I don’t need one where the upcoming political crisis of the EU hits more than 5000 posts… 
Done. The discussion was getting a little far afield of the war in Ukraine, even though it was related. I think I got them all, but apologies for any orphaned or missed comments.
Hear, hear. For what it’s worth, you seem to be the only one in this discussion who knows what the EU is and how it works. And more importantly what it isn’t and how it cannot work.
(ETA: well, you and @LutherBlisset)
That said, if after this is over and Ukraine is still asking for EU membership and no assistance is given in reaching the criteria I am going to personally march to Brussels to protest.
God forbid changing the rules to help an invaded country in major distress when there’s a fucking war on.
I’da thought it goes along with the concept of “emergency” too.
There’ll be a finding on a decision on whether to call a meeting or even, should it merit it, an assembly to discover whether this merits being described as an emergency and therefore worth convening the members or perhaps at some point later the council to truly confirm the best language to be deployed before we can move forward at another time to be arranged after further investigation.
The rules are holy writ and we must not change them, whatever the cost to human life… /s
…there is still a Ukraine…
If the EU can’t move quickly enough, can’t we just fast-track Ukraine to be the 51st U.S. state?
I really feel like we are taking the question of whether Ukraine should be granted immediate EU membership more seriously than even Zelensky is here. Ukraine wants more comprehensive support from the EU and so they are asking for something way beyond that so that the comprehensive support that they really want right now will seem a no-brainer by comparison. The question isn’t will Ukraine be granted immediate membership (they will not), but what the EU will do for Ukraine now in lieu of that and in expectation of future membership (which is no longer even in question).
Hah, I’d missed that! But, speaking as someone living in the most recent US state, I think of this more positively. I mean, why not?
(When I lived in the UK, before the EU and during Thatcher’s reign of terror, there was a brief attempt in my part of the country to revive a thing called the Council of the North, the nominal goal being a breaking away akin to Scottish-style devolution. Never happened, of course, but it made for an excellent talking point.)
Exactly. And they’re doing a lot, and with surprising bureaucratic nimbleness.
Which makes it even harder to hear the same insults in this thread we have heard from Brexiters for years.
I’m under the impression that a lot of people do not quite understand what the EU is, except some quaint European thing. Just some European trade bloc “rules” and self-important bureaucrats in Brussels.
Edit regarding the idea of admitting to the US:
Good luck in making congress admit 44 million people as a new state, where the gdp per capita is a tenth of that of Mississippi and rampant corruption rivaling that in Mexico. And with a brand new border not only with Russia, but six other countries. Ah, but why ask congress. Just suspend parts of the constitution, they are just rules. More of like guidelines, really.
