Ukraine could get some pre-accession EU membership benefits – Metsola

Ukraine could receive some of the benefits of EU membership before it actually joins the bloc.

This was stated by the President of the European Parliament Roberta Metsola in an interview with The Guardian.

She does not consider it necessary to wait for the official accession of Ukraine and other candidate countries to the EU in order for them to enjoy some of the benefits of membership.

In particular, candidate countries can access free mobile roaming in the EU, a popular policy that means that while on vacation in the EU, tariffs are the same as at home.

"If we are going to extend roaming to those countries, let’s do that. The network operators are ready to do that," Metsola said.

She noted that trade barriers for businesses could also be removed.

"Pre-accession also means access to funds, access to universities, access for students, the possibility to tap into the internal market, whether we do import and export tariffs,” she said. “We said for years Ukraine could not be connected to the European electricity grid. It took us days to do that once the war started. At the end of the day it was always about political will," she said.

The President of the European Parliament hopes that negotiations on Ukraine's accession to the EU will start before Christmas - in December.

"I expect a concrete outcome because the worst signal could be that we have given these people targets and deadlines which we can’t meet ourselves," she added.

Author – Anastasiya Glotova, 26/09/2023