European Union planned to open first cluster with Ukraine, but decision was postponed

The European Union was one step away from opening its first negotiating cluster with Ukraine despite Hungary's blockade – but the decision, planned for 18 July, never came to fruition.

European Pravda has learned that a legally unconventional but potentially effective scheme had been developed in Brussels that would enable Budapest's formal veto to be circumvented.

According to the plan – which was agreed on by the European Commission, European Council President António Costa, and several member states, primarily Denmark, which currently holds the presidency of the Council of the EU – the opening of the negotiating cluster was due to take place on 18 July without a vote, on the sidelines of a meeting of the EU General Affairs Council.

The position can be summarised as follows: the EU's founding documents do not require unanimous voting on intermediate technical steps such as the opening of clusters. Therefore, the European Commission has the right to do so on its own initiative, as the EU member states gave it this power when they opened negotiations with Ukraine last year.

According to European Pravda, the first high-level discussion of this idea took place in The Hague during the NATO summit, and the final round of talks with the leadership of the European Commission and the European Council took place in Rome on 10 July. It was then that Enlargement Commissioner Marta Kos made a statement that she was confident that all chapters in the accession negotiations with Ukraine would be opened.

However, even as these agreements were being made, events began to unfold that took the Europeans by surprise. In a flagrant breach of the law, the Ukrainian government rejected the candidate who had been selected to head the Economic Security Bureau in a transparent process with EU backing. The home of Vitalii Shabunin, head of the Anti-Corruption Action Centre, was searched without a court warrant.

Ultimately, it became known that Denmark did not put the proposal to open the first negotiating cluster on the agenda of the 18 July meeting.

Several of European Pravda’s sources maintain that the main obstacles to this were internal European ones. Brussels wanted to avoid any of the key EU states publicly challenging this move.

Meanwhile, some member states believed that the decision needed more work and should be postponed until September.

Incidentally, former deputy prime minister Olha Stefanishyna acknowledged in her last interview in office that there was indeed a plan to open the negotiations on 18 July, and she placed the responsibility for its failure – and, in part, for her resignation – on the EU.

However, this is not backed up by the information available to European Pravda. As of 14 July, when it became known that Zelenskyy had decided to replace the minister responsible for European integration, European Pravda's sources in Brussels said the process was going well and that there was every reason to expect a diplomatic victory, i.e. the opening of the cluster.