Ukraine lags behind Turkey, Serbia, Albania in readiness for EU accession – report

Although the EU Commissioners that arrived in Kyiv for the EU-Ukraine Summit on 3 February brought a clear message that Ukraine will be part of the EU, the EU's regular assessment of Ukraine's progress on the path to Eurointegration shows that much has to be done. A report by the European Commission provided an assessment of 33 chapters of the EU acquis, grouped into six clusters. For each chapter, the EC assessed the preparation within four defined stages, from "early stage" to "good level" of readiness to implement EU legislation. These qualitative assessments can be converted into scores from 1 to 4 to quantify progress. This assessment is the basis for judging how much a candidate country is prepared for membership. It includes four chapters with a "good level" of readiness, five "moderate levels of readiness," 16 with "some level" (including the chapter on the judiciary and human rights, which was assessed by the EC in June), and 8 "early stages." Ukraine had made the most progress in external relations, as well as foreign policy, security, and defense policy, together forming cluster 6, External Relations. The sections on the customs union and energy also received maximum points. The five sections with moderate readiness are the free movement of goods, digital transformation and media, economic and monetary policy, science and research, and food safety. All other sections are at an early stage or at some level of readiness. Altogether, Ukraine has only scored 69 out of 132 possible points, giving it an average score of 2.16. Georgia received 67 points according to the same methodology, which means that it is not too far behind, and Moldova received only 55 points. Türkiye, whose accession negotiations with the EU have been officially suspended, received 94 points. The leader of the rating, Montenegro, has 99.5 points according to this methodology. Serbia is in second place with 98 points. Among the countries at the stage of membership negotiations, Albania has the worst score - 84.5 points, and it formally opened negotiations only last year. But even this is much higher than Ukraine's score! This comparison shows that the state of implementation of EU law in Ukraine is embryonic. In fact, Kyiv has only just begun the path to accession, European Pravda writes.

How close is Ukraine to becoming an EU member?

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