I know virtually no one who is against that idea, even most German language forums I frequent are basically leaning heavily “Sure, once they are ready and we’re going to help them getting ready.”
The tone here was basically set with “just suspend the rules”. That’s perhaps well-meaning, but frankly also a blatant disregard of the democratic process and rule of law.
Yes! This is a very positive thing to say. It is the kind of thing that we should talk about in this thread. You are right about the tone in here, and I think that we can change the tone if we just stop bickering about who is “closer to what is happening” and just talk about what practical steps can be taken to make it happen in the future because it is not possible immediately. Let’s stay positive.
Thank you. It’s indeed a habit I’m trying to break, not just in English. My native language uses articles in front of countries a bit more often, as in “die Türkei”, “die USA” or “die Schweiz”, etc.
I’ll tried to create an auto correction in my settings changing “the Ukraine" to simply to “Ukraine", but this doesn’t work due to the space character being the trigger.
Testing: Ah “Ukraine“ → „Ukraine ohne die“ works. A bit cumbersome, but I guess I’ll be able to take the training wheels off after a while.
However, I will stop participating in this thread due to slow mode. Ain’t got no time for games. (Feels just like AStA all over again)
That’s a bad-faith representation of what people are saying.
Well that’s certainly exactly how many comments came over, especially after some of us politely tried to inform people, who seemed to really not understand what the EU is and how it works, about the reality.
Persistent comments about how it should be done, or it could be done, or it should be tried to be done… …“because there’s a war on” seemed to perpetuate that tone.
Nobody was being shitty to anybody but some of us were exasperated with the apparent insistence that “the EU must do something NOW” in the face of the reality that its rules bind it and that it has done a fuck of a lot already.
At this point replies about “bad faith” fall on slightly deaf ears when a good number of posts have given the impression of wilfully, almost perversely, ignoring the reality and continuing with comments whose tenor was either 'they can suspend their own rules if they want to" or “we need to talk about suspending the rules” when (I assume) the rule of law is something we all here would adamantly support.
The “case” seems to have been made on both sides, so I will be trying very hard to ignore further replies here (but that’s slightly harder seeing as my post is the one at the top of the thread so I keep getting pinged every time anyone replies to anyone. I need to see how to stop that.)
You can (and probably should) ask the mods or any leader to close this topic. We have reached the point of just bitter sniping between wishful thinkers and realists (clearly instant membership was never going to happen).
Neither side seems to want to give any ground in spite of arguing a moot point, and even the likes on each post reflect sides of the battle line, rather than any useful points in a productive discussion. And just to avoid bothsidesism, and at the risk of alienating a lot of people, you and others have given more than enough reason why instant membership for Ukraine cannot happen to satisfy an impartial third party and I think that you can ignore anyone who says otherwise at this point. That said, everyone can and should let this go already.
You can scroll to the bottom to “tracking” and change your notifications for any thread
@DukeTrout Clearly we each have very different views of what constitutes bad faith and politeness. Not least whether an accusations of bad faith levelled directly at someone who has been at pains to explain their view and help inform others, is itself somewhat impolite (and I’m not talking about me). Surely anyone can see that several comments upthread seemed very much to be, on the face of it - however badly composed - representing a viewpoint of ‘never mind the reality or the rules, the EU must do [something] about this membership thing immediately’?
Apparently not, so I do agree about this having descended into
And I say thank you for
And I agree about
so …
@gracchus @orenwolf - will somebody who has the power please shut this down now as @Jesse13927 has suggested above?
Holy shit.
This was never totally impossible, but for all the reasons stated upthread it felt pretty damn unlikely. But… “It will not be, as usual, a matter of years, but rather a matter of weeks” are pretty strong words.
The Ukrainian government is expecting the EU to grant candidate status in June, meaning that the accession process can begin this year. The Association Agreement gives a leg up but AFAIK there will still be years of negotiations before Ukraine can join the EU.
THIS!
Wonderfully swift and symbolic move to ‘candidate’ status, which does send a strong message, but still it will take years.
Years instead of decades still qualifies as “fast track”.
At least from a technical standpoint.
Probably a good idea, but also a great way to alienate the Balkans…
It should work out, more or less.
The Balkan is either already in or on track to join the EU.
The distinctions between ‘candidate’, ‘applicant’ and ‘potential candidate’ are… subtle and somewhat open for interpretation.
The current thinking is that Serbia and Montenegro are front-runner candidates and will have joined by 2025, and the other Balkan countries within five years or so after that. Kosovo will be a bit tricky as it is not recognized (yet?) by all members of the EU. Which may result in something like ‘not-officially-but-de-facto-a-full-member’ status.
The yellow bits which are not Ukraine are Moldova and Georgia, BTW.
Negotiations with Turkey are frozen. Everybody is invited to guess when they will be thawed out. A lot hinges on how long Erdoğan lasts, and who will replace him.
Iceland lodged its application in 2008, but froze accession negotiations in 2013, not expected to be resumed anytime soon. Public opinion is solidly against it.
Norway and Switzerland may or may not consider having another go at joining the EU. My guess is that Norway might try again when there is no point in arguing about fish anymore.
I expect the UK to re-join shortly after the successful revolution against the one-party Tory-state.
ETA:
Connections
ETA 2:
Internal structures
That’s… kind of crazy… Montenegro doesn’t seem particularly problematic, but let’s not forget Serbia’s role in the wars. It’s not fair to pin the crimes of Milosevic on the current administration, of course, but how has the current government dealt with the situation in Bosnia?
It’s Iceland… do people not like Bjork? 
Please explain, my Eurofriends…
Clarification: Public opinion in Iceland is against joining the EU.
