Why Ukraine fell behind Moldova on its way to EU
The EU Enlargement Report for 2025, which was unexpectedly favourable towards Ukraine, has been enthusiastically received by Ukrainian politicians and officials.
In fact, the report should have been seen as a wake-up call for Ukraine.
You only have to compare Ukraine’s score with those of other key candidates.
EU Enlargement Commissioner Marta Kos said on Tuesday that Ukraine is one of the four leading enlargement states – and that’s true. Those leaders are Montenegro, Albania, Moldova and Ukraine. But out of these four, Ukraine is trailing in last place.
The report officially placed Moldova "top", as it has shown remarkable progress over the past year, overtaking Ukraine.
Read more about the positions of the candidate countries on their path to EU membership in the article by Sergiy Sydorenko, European Pravda's editor: EU candidate ranking 2025: leaders, laggers and Ukraine’s critical crossroads.
Last year’s EU report identified four countries that were still in the enlargement package but had no real chance of accession in the foreseeable future: Türkiye, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Kosovo.
Georgia joined the outliers in 2024 when its authorities finally chose a pro-Russian and anti-democratic path of development.
One big surprise this year is that the circle of outliers has expanded.
The European Commission has added Serbia and North Macedonia to the list. Neither country’s authorities are willing to continue with democratic reforms. The EU noted the start of backsliding on reforms in Serbia. When that’s the case, high economic indicators (Serbia was actually a leader in enlargement until recently) no longer matter to the EU.
As a result, the EU has publicly stated that there are now only four countries in the group of leaders, including Ukraine.
Observers in Brussels have primarily focused on Montenegro’s rapid progress, while Moldova’s sensational success has been somewhat overshadowed.
The EU report says it is, and Moldova has demonstrated this in what was the second big surprise in the report. Chișinău has progressed more than five times faster than Ukraine: Moldova has earned 13 additional points in one year.
At the current rate, it would only take Montenegro two and a half years to bring all its chapters up to at least a 4. There are solid grounds to expect that it will soon be ready to join the EU.
The situation doesn’t look good for Ukraine. Officials are celebrating the report as a "success", yet Ukraine has gained only 2.5 additional points across all 33 negotiating chapters. Ukraine still needs 54 points to reach a minimum of 4 points in all areas.
That will take another 22 years at this rate!
In recent months, Brussels has been increasingly mentioning a potential new trio – Montenegro, Albania and Moldova. No Ukraine. This has upset Kyiv and its allies, but Kyiv’s only effective argument remains reforms. The logic is simple: no reforms – no accession.
We must not allow ourselves to be misled by encouraging assurances from EU officials who say they are "impressed by how Ukraine is implementing reforms while it’s at war". The real assessment of the pace of reforms in the European Commission report is a genuine wake-up call.
If Ukraine continues at its current pace, much more slowly than its neighbour, it risks falling hopelessly behind, and the Ukraine-Moldova coupling may naturally break apart.
The only chance for Ukraine to avoid this, and ideally join the next wave of enlargement, lies in a real renewal of reform.
It’s time we realised that Ukraine is approaching a historic crossroads that will determine its future and that the EU is fully aware of all the challenges, even when it does not state them explicitly. The 2025 EU Enlargement Report clearly confirms both these points.