Zelenskyy has to be ambitious with EU, or he’ll get no response: an interview with Irish leader

All EU member states are equal when it comes to enlargement, and Ukraine knows this all too well from its experience with Viktor Orbán, whose government single-handedly blocked its accession process.

There is, however, one member state that enjoys a special role and unique opportunities.

That is the country holding the rotating Presidency of the Council of the European Union. It chairs meetings of many EU bodies, helps set their agendas, and can either actively push an issue forward or quietly let it stall.

Since 1 July, the EU Council Presidency has been held by Ireland, which is firmly committed to opening all the negotiating clusters for Ukraine and has a plan for achieving that. Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Micheál Martin, who visited Kyiv this week, spoke about that plan, as well as Ukraine's approach to the accession process and the key tasks that lie ahead for Kyiv.

"It's not that we’re deciding to postpone anything. We believe this is realistic"

Taoiseach, I am glad to see you here in Kyiv. Is this your second time here?

Third time.

I came after the outbreak of the war in my capacity as Taoiseach.

And then after about two and a half years being Taoiseach, I came back as foreign minister with the Foreign Affairs Council, when we all came together.

And now I'm back a third time as Taoiseach of the country again.

Cool! Let me start with a general question about the European Union. Why does the EU need Ukraine?

I think the European Union needs Ukraine, and Ukraine needs the EU, because we share a lot of common values in terms of democracy, fundamental rights, freedom of association – things that are important.

I believe that if we don't have enlargement in the neighbourhood, other things will happen – other bad things will happen. Russia, for example, will exploit a vacuum. They have exploited a vacuum and they've invaded Ukraine and they've violated the territorial integrity of Ukraine, which has implications for Europe and other parts of the continent.

The Presidency plays a special role in the enlargement process. Of course it doesn't make decisions on its own, but it helps shape the agenda. What are your expectations for the next six months?

What we want to achieve is that all clusters pertaining to Ukraine will be opened by the end of the year. That is our agenda.

Last week we were successful in opening Cluster 6. Cyprus had opened Cluster 1.

Our next target is Clusters 2 and 3, as soon as possible, and then the remainder by the end of the year.

Obviously we've a lot of work to do with other member states – we have to persuade people. But we have set this as our target.

We have made Ukraine a priority of the Irish presidency.

And the enlargement of others – Montenegro is close, we want to close all the remaining chapters for Montenegro.

And Moldova is important. Moldova is coupled with Ukraine right now.

We have closed some chapters for Albania last week, which is positive.

We want to get a cluster opened in relation to Serbia as well.

You've suggested opening Clusters 2 and 3 first, and then Clusters 4 and 5. We've been told several times that Ukraine is ready for all the clusters. Why not open them all at once? What is the reason for postponing them?

I think there are two aspects to that. First of all, it's not we deciding to postpone anything. We believe this is realistic.

And obviously there are ongoing reforms – this is a merit-based process.

Ukraine has made enormous strides, and the Commission president has said this. But there is need for more reforms, of course, on rule of law, anti-corruption, and so on.

Ukraine has made great progress. But we have to persuade others as well.

And if you consider the period before the Russian invasion, enlargement was in cold storage to a large extent. Quite a number of countries in the Western Balkans, for example, came close but didn't quite get over the line. We're very conscious of that.

But since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, I think the atmosphere has changed. But there are still challenges and people still want to reflect on it and so on.

We think our programme is realistic.

"The 10-point Kachka-Kos list and plan are there to be engaged with"

So does that mean Ukraine still has to fulfil certain conditions before the Council is ready to open all the clusters?

There are ongoing issues that every country applying to join the European Union has to benchmark themselves against and make sure that they achieve.

The Kachka-Kos 10-point list and plan – those are there to be engaged with.

I had good meetings today with President Zelenskyy, with the prime minister, the Speaker of Parliament – all of them are focused on reforms, and they know that it's important that the reforms get done as part of the accession process.

But also, across the Union more broadly, I think it's important to bring people with you, and different member states have different approaches to enlargement.

We'll come back to the Kachka-Kos plan later. First, I'd like to ask about how you see Ukraine's overall approach. Some people say President Zelenskyy is being overly optimistic about Ukraine's EU accession timeline and has set goals that may be difficult to achieve.

I take a different view to that. I think President Zelenskyy has been very forthright, ambitious, determined, and he perseveres, and that's important. If people don’t see someone with ambition coming forward, they're not going to respond in an ambitious way.

He doesn't leave much room for people to hide on the question.

So that's a plus, that's a positive, in my view, because he has been relentless in pursuing this on behalf of the Ukrainian people.

And in our view, enlargement is a key part of the struggle of the Ukrainian people, because it's what people aspire to.

It's interesting to hear you say that ambition is a good thing. In Ukraine, we tend to share that view. Do you think most EU leaders share this view?

The majority do, but not all.

Others are worried, others have different views. There has to be political realism at times, there's no question about that.

But from Ukraine's perspective, I think there's an obligation on your leadership to be ambitious and to push strongly. Otherwise you do not get the response. That is why I think President Zelenskyy has been correct in his approach in pushing very strongly for this.

There are several ideas being discussed in the EU. One was proposed by Chancellor Merz, then there was the French-German non-paper and the Lithuanian proposal. Which of these do you think is most likely to become the basis for future changes to the enlargement process?

From the Irish perspective, we will facilitate discussion on those ideas, but we will not be distracted from the merit-based approach and from the present system of joining the European Union.

We will continue to pursue the opening of clusters, the closing of clusters, closing of chapters.

But we will also facilitate a discussion.

One interesting positive from those ideas is that people are now beginning to think about enlargement – what does it mean? Because for a long time, enlargement was dormant, as I said earlier, before the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Now people are beginning to sort of say: "Okay, enlargement is coming. How do we manage it?" In one way, if you stand back, that's a positive. And so people are thinking: are there other mechanisms to facilitate a country's progress to enlargement?

There was an informal discussion of this in the Western Balkan summit with the European Union, and some of the impetus came from some of the Western Balkan countries. I found it quite interesting.

But from our perspective in Ireland and the presidency, we cannot be distracted.

You know, Montenegro is in the business now of closing its chapters. We feel we can close all its chapters by the end of the year. We believe we can open all the clusters for Ukraine and Moldova and do more work for Albania, Serbia and others.

So we will not be distracted from that, but of course, parallel with that, it makes sense that there will be these discussions.

"The prime minister was very clear, and he went through the Kachka-Kos list"

Which do you think will come first – the end of the war, or Ukraine's accession to the European Union?

Well, we hope for the end of the war.

I cannot tell you the timeline for that right now, but I would hope that it would be soon. I think even a ceasefire would be very, very welcome.

I visited some of the sites that have been subject to missile attacks. I've met residents who've been made homeless because of attacks on their apartments. We are shocked that this level of attack on civilian infrastructure can happen.

So we would hope and pray that the war would end very, very quickly. And I would pray that it would end before accession.

But will it still be possible for Ukraine to join the EU if the war is protracted? Or perhaps achieve some form of political accession before the war is over?

That suggests the war will go on for a long, long time and I don't want to comprehend that, but it is possible in the sense that if you stand back and look at the level of engagement between Europe and Ukraine already, it's been quite accelerated, quite extraordinary.

Use of the SAFE [Security Action for Europe] programme, Ukraine's progression on the defence industry, for example. Look at the €90 billion borrowing by the European Union for Ukraine. There's been tremendous support from EU member states of Ukraine.

To a certain degree, there's been already a degree of engagement between Ukraine and the European Union that's unprecedented.

Do you see any realistic chance of changing the enlargement procedure, which currently requires unanimity among EU member states at every stage? There has been discussion about reforming this. Is it politically feasible?

It's very difficult. It's very difficult.

We have a window now, particularly with the change of government in Hungary. And we all need to work constructively with the Hungarian government as well. And the European institutions are, and we are.

But there are different government changes in other member states as well. And we will engage with those.

Giving up the unanimity is difficult, particularly when it comes to closing chapters.

And what about opening, or other steps?

Yes, but we would argue to people, in an endeavour to persuade them, that opening a chapter is not the same as closing a chapter, in one way, if you know what I'm saying.

It's a very challenging prospect. On the other hand, Europe cannot stand still.

The European Union cannot stand still. The last country to join the EU was in 2013. It was Croatia.

I'd like to ask you about reforms. You mentioned that you've heard that there is a strong appetite for reform from Ukraine's political leadership. But do you think the Verkhovna Rada is genuinely ready to move forward? From our perspective, we haven't seen enough progress.

Certainly at the parliament there was a very strong focus and emphasis on the need for reforms.

The prime minister was very clear, and he went through that list of Kachka-Kos.

He said he has discussed it with the president of the Сommission, and he wants to be in a position where he can come back and respond in detail to each point as to what's possible and what's not possible.

That is kind of a positive engagement.

And the president is very clear that there needs to be continuing reforms. Because your number one goal – and you have many goals in the war – is to protect your people, but also join the European Union. I think the big prize is joining the European Union, ultimately, for the future of the Ukrainian people.

I think we need to keep the eye on that. And part of that then means reforms as per the European criteria that are set.

You always have to have priorities in reforms. What are the priorities for Ukraine?

Ukraine has to prioritise that itself. Obviously the rule of law is important for the EU member states. And anti-corruption is important. An independent judiciary is important. A strong, resilient independent judiciary is very important.

These are areas that are important to member states in Europe.

And those are the kind of areas that people focus on.

"We would prefer it if material wasn't going to Russia"

Normally it's Central and Eastern European countries that have been Ukraine's strongest supporters. They understand Russia and the threat it poses because of their own history. Ireland is much further away, and Russia poses a far less immediate security threat. Why, then, has Ireland been such a strong supporter of Ukraine?

A very basic one.

We were a small country that was a colony for a long time in earlier centuries.

For us, our security is embedded in multilateralism and in the United Nations framework. Our security is the UN multilateral framework.

And we see the Russian invasion of Ukraine as a fundamental violation of that framework. A fundamental undermining of multilateralism and of territorial integrity.

And that's basically it.

And also, we've been through our own struggles historically. We now are in a very good position. We’ve a tremendous relationship with the United Kingdom. Ireland and the UK are in a good position and have been for the last 40 years. And that's a positive.

And then we have had a very good experience as members of the European Union, and we feel then that if other countries want to join, provided they meet the criteria, they should be allowed to join. I don't feel morally I can stop anyone from joining the European Union once they adhere to the criteria.

There is still concern about how sanctions are being implemented in Ireland. I'm referring to the alumina case, where Ukraine has raised questions about how both the Irish government and Irish businesses are complying with sanctions. How do you think this issue can be resolved?

Alumina has never been sanctioned by the European Union. It’s never been put on the list, so alumina as a product has never been sanctioned. The Aughinish plant is not breaking any sanction, Ireland isn't breaking any sanction, because there's no sanction there to break in terms of the product.

But Ukraine has an issue – which I understand, by the way – with the fact that material from Aughinish Alumina is now finding its way to Russia.

But alumina from Aughinish is also going to France, to the smelter in Dunkirk, to Sweden.

It's clear that it's a very important part of the European supply chain in terms of alumina. Now we've concluded an investigation. It has not found evidence that it is going into the Russian weapons industry, but neither can we say definitively that it is not.

We would prefer if material wasn't going to Russia.

So we're going to work with the European Commission now, we're going to share our investigation with them, because this is a European supply chain issue.

The sanctions were never meant to damage Europe. And Europe seems to have a problem with alumina, because I think the primary manufacturing of alumina, about 7% is in Europe. So it's very dependent on others outside of Europe in terms of manufacturing and processing and so on.

Aughinish is important as a European facility.

In Ireland we don't depend on the material from Aughinish – there are no industries in Ireland that need the material from Aughinish. 50% goes to the EU, but now close to 50% is going to Russia. That’s a concern, of course it is.

Is there a way to completely stop exports to Russia?

That's what we're going to look at. It will be difficult.

There's about 900 to 1,000 people's jobs depend on it as well, so we have to factor that in. People are worried about their livelihoods and so on.

We have supported every sanctions package. In fact, under the presidency, we succeeded in getting the 21st package over the line today, this morning.

Our team, the Irish team in Brussels, did a first-class job in negotiating the compromises – because other member states had issues about industries in their countries. You know, that happens with sanctions.

We managed to get a deal, which I think was very important because it was the largest list, I think, of individuals sanctioned in the financial sector in that list that's passed now by Europe. And also cryptocurrency enterprises and so on.

That sends a very strong signal that Europe is united in continuing with sanctions. And then we will work on the preparation of the 22nd sanctions package.

Finally, do you have a message for Ukrainian refugees living in Ireland and elsewhere across Europe? Many of them are living with uncertainty. What can they expect? Will they be able to stay for as long as they need, or do you think European countries will increasingly encourage them to return to Ukraine?

It's very difficult – first of all for Ukrainians here, but also across the world. I mean, it's appalling.

The war has visited terrible trauma on the Ukrainian people. I saw it again today. That's why we took in initially about 125,000 Ukrainians into Ireland, which given our population of close to 5 million is a big number per capita. But we did that because we felt we had an obligation. We have a housing crisis in Ireland on top of all of that. We've got to try and manage.

Our system initially cost about €2 billion a year because we hired and leased out hotels and rooms. We're changing that over time. But Ukrainians have settled well in Ireland. They've integrated well.

Many Ukrainians are working. Many of their children are going to schools. Obviously there will come a time when many will want to come back to Ukraine and help to rebuild Ukraine. And we will be helpful in that regard.

But it's a special case. We're very conscious of the fact that this is a unique situation: the first major war on the European continent since World War II. The European Union had to step up, and many member states did. And we would like to think we've played our part. Others have done more, but we're doing everything we possibly can within our capacities. And we will continue to do that to support Ukraine and to support Ukrainian people in Ireland.

Sergiy Sydorenko

Editor, European Pravda