Two years have passed since Ukraine submitted its application for EU membership. It has made significant progress on its path to membership: a political decision to open accession negotiations, a negotiation framework proposed by the European Commission and a pre-accession screening of legislation.

The main challenges are still ahead.

One of the most difficult challenges will be reforms in the fundamental EU norms and values, which in EU terminology are called Fundamentals.

Read more about the importance of this cluster and its specifics in the analytical column by Oleksandra Bulana, the Ukrainian Center for European Policy, and Viktoriia Melnyk, the Center of Policy and Legal Reforms – The Fundamentals of EU Accession: How EU and Ukraine will negotiate on fundamental values.

The current enlargement methodology, as the authors remind us, envisages that accession negotiations begin with the opening of the cluster Fundamentals and end with the closure of this cluster.

"The negotiated framework developed by Brussels for Ukraine further emphasises that the overall pace of negotiations and progress on other issues will depend on Ukraine's success with the Fundamentals cluster," Bulana and Melnyk note.

The Fundamentals include five chapters of EU law (judiciary and fundamental rights; justice, freedom and security; public procurement; statistics; financial control), as well as three blocks without separate negotiation chapters – economic criteria, functioning of democratic institutions, and public administration reform.

According to the authors, most of the negotiation chapters do not have EU acts that Ukraine would have to implement into Ukrainian law, as is the case with all other chapters and topics of negotiations with the EU.

These reforms are based on common international standards and are implemented in all countries, paying attention to their legal system.

"For example, the judicial system in all EU countries is built differently, based on different legal systems, so the EU does not require their unification. At the same time, the rule of law is one of the basic EU principles, and the requirements for candidate countries are very high," the experts note.

They add that since there is no clear list of acts in the EU to regulate the judiciary, in formulating the requirements for candidates, it is necessary to rely on international principles, standards and best practices of other European countries.

In practice, the EU develops a set of benchmarks for each candidate country, which come in three types.

These benchmarks are mandatory for each negotiation chapter and are necessary to demonstrate the results of the reforms carried out by the candidate country.

One of the reasons for the difficulty in meeting the benchmarks, warn Bulana and Melnyk, is the approach of general formulations.

The Ukrainian Center for European Policy and the Center of Policy and Legal Reforms propose a list of benchmarks for the functioning of the judicial system. They were identified based on a current Ukrainian legislation analysis and its practical application.

Of course, the final benchmark list will be formulated by Brussels. But Ukraine must also convey its vision, which the European Commission usually takes seriously, provided there is proper argumentation.

The presented study can be useful both to the European Commission in the process of official screening and to the government in developing a roadmap regarding the rule of law.