Ukraine’s path to the European Union

During the 32 years of Ukraine's independence, the priorities of the state's foreign policy have often changed for different reasons, but the desire to join the European Union has prevailed among the population for a long time. Cooperation between Ukraine and the EU began when the member states of the European Union recognized the independence of Ukraine. Bilateral relations strengthened over the years and were transformed from the Partnership and Cooperation Agreement (1994), then the European Union – Ukraine Association Agreement (2017), and finally to the acquisition of the status of a candidate for accession to the EU in 2022. Moreover, on 14 December 2023, the European Union agreed to open accession negotiations with Ukraine. Many steps have already been taken toward this goal, particularly all 7 EU recommendations in judicial reform, anti-corruption, anti-oligarchic legislation, media, advertising, and protection of national minorities have been implemented. The process of Ukraine’s accession to the European Union will definitely not be easy, primarily in the conditions of Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine, but the European integration future of Ukraine has every chance of becoming a reality.

Olha Sharan is a PhD, Associate Professor at the Department of European and Regional Studies, Faculty of International Relations, Ivan Franko National University of Lviv, Ukraine. She defended her PhD thesis in Political Science and published a monograph in which the results of the dissertation research were presented. Sharan studies various aspects of separatism as a multidimensional and dynamic phenomenon of modernity, in particular, the mechanisms of suppression of separatism at the international and national levels and the ways of deseparatization of the regions of European states.