EPP demands Ukraine join NATO — eventually

The European People’s Party on Tuesday waded into NATO’s thorniest ongoing debate: What to do about Ukraine’s bid to join the alliance.  

The center-right group in the European Parliament adopted a declaration calling for the military alliance to lay the groundwork for Kyiv to join NATO — in the long run. 

“The EPP Group expects that the upcoming Vilnius and Washington summits pave the way to extend an invitation to Ukraine to join NATO and that the accession process will start after the war is over and be finalised as soon as possible,” the grouping said in the declaration, published late Tuesday. 

This move, the group said, “will strengthen our Alliance and be a further step towards sustainable peace in Europe.”

The alliance’s political relationship with Ukraine is currently one of the most sensitive — and divisive — questions facing NATO.

During a 2008 summit in Bucharest, NATO made a vague promise that Ukraine would ultimately join the alliance. 

And while allies agree that Ukraine cannot join right now, there are differences of opinion about whether the alliance should make the pledge of eventual membership more concrete, and what NATO’s relationship with Kyiv should look like at this stage. 

Ukraine requested an “accelerated accession” to join NATO back in September. And as the alliance’s leaders prepare to meet in Lithuania in July, there is pressure from Kyiv for the allies to make a concrete, public gesture at the summit that Ukraine is moving closer to membership. 

“NATO should make a political decision to put forward a timetable for Ukraine’s accession, either at the Vilnius summit or by the end of 2023,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba wrote last month in an essay in Foreign Affairs, in a not-so-veiled effort to convince the Western establishment to overcome its hesitation. 

Washington and some Western European capitals have thus far largely preferred to avoid the membership discussion and focus heavily on practical assistance for Ukraine’s armed forces. Some eastern NATO allies, however, want to see Ukraine get a meaningful signal in Vilnius and build closer institutional links between the alliance and Kyiv. 

“We would like to show strong political will,” MEP Andrzej Halicki, the head of the EPP’s Polish delegation, told POLITICO in a recent interview.

Asked why the EPP declaration was significant, he said: “The biggest group has an influence on the others. If we’re strong and determined,” then others will follow the EPP’s lead.

EPP Group Chairman Manfred Weber said in a statement on Tuesday that the alliance needs to prepare for a “membership perspective” as soon as the war ends. 

“We cannot imagine Ukraine outside Europe’s security architecture after the war,” Weber said, adding that “at the NATO summits in Vilnius in July and in Washington next year, we must correct the mistakes of the past.” 

Officials say that while there is no unanimity yet with NATO about what precise message will be communicated at the Vilnius summit, the debate is evolving. 

“Some months ago things looked really stuck,” said one senior diplomat from Eastern Europe, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal alliance dynamics. “Now it seems there is interest to offer Kyiv something consistent also on [the] political dimension at Vilnius,” the diplomat said.

“I really hope,” the diplomat added, “allies can agree on this.”