France pours cold water on Ukraine’s EU dream

https://rt.com/news/-france-ukraine-eu-membership

Ukraine will have to meet the EU’s economic and political standards before being allowed to join the bloc, French Europe Minister Laurence Boone told lawmakers in Paris on Wednesday.

The minister was briefing French MPs on the decision by EU leaders to greenlight formal accession talks with Kiev, reached at a meeting in Brussels last week. Hungary objected to the step, insisting Ukraine is not ready for membership, but declined to veto the move. Moldova was also approved for membership talks at the same meeting.

Boone, who shared excerpts from her report on social media on Thursday, told lawmakers that in order to qualify for EU membership, candidate states must improve in areas such as media freedom, the rule of law, and fighting corruption.

“We do not want these places to be sources of instability at the borders of the European Union,” she stressed.