EU sets stage for decoupling Moldova's accession bid from Ukraine's

The European Union has set the stage for decoupling Moldova's accession process from Ukraine's after both candidates overcame Hungary's two-year veto and opened the fist cluster of negotiations.

The two countries have been informally paired since the early days of Russia's war of Ukraine, which prompted the back-to-back membership applications.

Since then, the question on when Chișinău should part ways from Kyiv has been looming over the conversation. But the optics of leaving a country at war behind on the waiting list proved problematic and the duo remained united in practice.

On Tuesday, at the end of an EU-Moldova summit in Brussels, the bloc's leadership suggested decoupling might soon be inevitable.

"Once the first cluster is open, every candidate country is responsible for itself, because they have to deliver different reforms, depending on what candidate country we're talking about," Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, said.

"Here, I'm only speaking about Moldova," she stressed.

Standing by her side, António Costa, the president of the European Council, praised the Moldovan government for approving reforms "very fast" and predicted that, if the pace were maintained, the candidate could "rapidly" unlock the remaining five clusters.

"Enlargement is the most important geopolitical investment," Costa said.

Accession consists of 33 chapters split into six thematic clusters.

Moldova and Ukraine are considered technically ready to open all the cluster but, so far, have only opened the first one, known as "Fundamentals" because it covers the rule of law, human rights, anti-corruption and the judiciary.

"I think we should not have a too short-sighted approach," von der Leyen said.

"When a candidate country performs the way Moldova does, it merits to move forward. A merit-based process does not mean slow. It means fair. And the fairness is (that) if you deliver, we have to deliver. So far I'm not worried about the process."