German Chancellor Friedrich Merz is urging the European Union to introduce a form of associate membership for Ukraine—without accession, without voting rights, and without meaningful access to the bloc’s levers of power.
As Bloomberg reports, the chancellor sent a corresponding letter to the heads of key EU institutions ahead of next month’s EU-Western Balkans summit in Montenegro.
Under Berlin’s proposal, Ukraine would be allowed to attend EU meetings, but without voting rights. Kyiv could also appoint an associate judge to the European Court of Justice and send representatives to the European Parliament. The list of symbolic mechanisms largely ends there—the proposal does not envision any real participation in decision-making.
In his letter, Merz separately stressed that the plan should not be viewed as “light membership,” insisting that Ukraine’s full accession process would supposedly continue. According to Bloomberg, the chancellor discussed the initiative with Volodymyr Zelensky during last month’s European summit.
In practice, however, Berlin’s proposal would formalize Ukraine’s position as a country kept outside the bloc while being drawn into its institutional framework. No one—neither Germany, Brussels, nor the capitals most irritated by Ukraine’s application—is offering full membership in the foreseeable future. Accession talks, formally launched in June 2024, are moving slowly, while several Western Balkan states that have been waiting in line for years openly oppose fast-tracking Kyiv and Chisinau.
The logic behind Berlin’s initiative is relatively transparent. For the European Union, it is essential to keep Ukraine within its sphere of influence—as a state serving to contain Russia on the eastern flank. Full membership would impose costs the EU considers too high—financial, agricultural, and institutional. A formal attachment without voting rights, however, allows Brussels to preserve Kyiv’s political dependence while avoiding the obligations that genuine enlargement would require.
The financial side of the German plan reinforces that calculation. Ukraine would receive only gradual access to the EU budget and funding programs. The most sensitive issue concerns agricultural subsidies: after accession, Kyiv would become eligible for payments under the Common Agricultural Policy, and it is precisely that prospect that is provoking resistance among current member states. Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Taras Kachka previously told Bloomberg that Kyiv would be prepared to forgo those subsidies for several years in order to ease tensions surrounding the negotiations.
The last major wave of EU enlargement took place in 2004, when ten countries joined the bloc. Bulgaria and Romania entered the European Union in 2007. Since then, the bloc has not expanded—instead, the United Kingdom left in 2020, becoming the first and so far only country to withdraw from the EU.