When will EU start real accession talks with Ukraine and who wants to slow the process down

Ukraine wants to open the first cluster in its EU accession talks as early as 26 May, and the other five shortly afterwards.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha shared this with the media after the EU Foreign Affairs Council meeting in Brussels on 11 May. This point was even included in the official statement by Ukraine's Foreign Ministry.

Given such optimism, EU Enlargement Commissioner Marta Kos appeared uncharacteristically restrained in her expectations. According to Kos, the first cluster should be opened before the end of Cyprus's presidency of the Council of the EU (by 30 June) and all the remaining clusters should open in July 2026.

But the diplomats in Brussels who spoke to European Pravda off the record are even more cautious. They say the opening of the final clusters could be delayed until the autumn, or even later.

Read more in the article by Tetiana Vysotska and Sergiy Sydorenko of European Pravda: Who is the new Hungary? Why Ukraine's EU accession talks are still stalling and what comes next.

"Everything is ready for opening the clusters," one European Commission official recently assured European Pravda. Both the draft negotiating positions and the benchmarks have been submitted to the Council of the EU for consideration. They received preliminary approval from 26 member states (all except Hungary) back in winter, which made it possible to launch technical negotiations through "frontloading".

But politically, there has been no progress whatsoever.

And Orbán’s defeat has not changed the situation so far.

On 12 May, Brussels was rocked by a statement made by Rikard Jozwiak of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. He said the most active opponents of all the negotiating clusters for Ukraine being opened at once are France and Poland. According to Jozwiak, they have been lobbying for the opening of the remaining clusters to be postponed roughly until autumn.

Indeed, Paris and Warsaw have every reason not to rush this process and to compel Kyiv to meet certain conditions first instead.

Poland and France are both countries with powerful farming lobbies that fear competition from Ukrainian farmers – and not without reason. In both countries, there are also concerns that Ukraine's accession to the EU would undermine the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy fund, which currently provides generous annual financing from the EU budget to their agricultural sectors.

And there is something else that unites these two countries.

Another factor is that both will hold major elections in 2027: presidential elections in France and parliamentary elections in Poland. Strong farmers' movements represent large blocs of voters who could become a serious political problem during the upcoming campaigns.

But it’s important to emphasise that France and Poland are not alone in having such reservations. There is similar distrust and concern regarding Ukraine’s agricultural integration into the EU in Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and elsewhere.

The issue is not that any one country is prepared to veto Ukraine’s progress towards EU membership. Likewise, even though Poland and France's actions are influenced by the approaching elections, neither country is considering freezing Ukraine's progress until after their own elections. That scenario is not even part of the discussions.

But ideas about changing the approach to future negotiations with Kyiv are indeed being discussed.

One more detail: the discussions inside the EU about possible changes to Ukraine’s criteria primarily concern two clusters: Cluster 5 (Agriculture) and Cluster 4 (particularly the chapters related to transport, where Poland effectively has a monopoly on freight transportation).

More broadly, the various areas of the negotiations with Ukraine give rise to significantly different levels of controversy. That is why officials in Brussels are increasingly advising against expecting all the clusters to open simultaneously.

So the first cluster could open no earlier than mid-June.

However, multiple conversations with the European sources indicate that one, two or even three clusters, specifically Cluster 6 (External Relations), Cluster 2 (Internal Market), and possibly Cluster 3 (Competitiveness), could be opened in July 2026, at the start of the Irish EU Council Presidency.

Clusters 4 and 5, which are already subject to discussions about possible changes in the EU's position, may take longer. The process could potentially stretch into autumn 2026. Some sceptics even suggest that the agricultural cluster might be delayed until 2027, when Lithuania holds the EU Council presidency. However, nothing has been decided yet.