With this agreement, the member countries will now invite the European Commission to present an opinion on each of the applications presented by these three countries, to decide the granting of the status of the candidates, announced the French presidency of the Council of the EU.
In that way, the European Commission must rule on each claim separatelyin the first step of a long and complex process that in its final chapter requires the unanimous vote of the 27 member states of the bloc, the AFP news agency reported.
Ukraine, facing invasion by Russia, has applied for immediate membership, through what it called a “special procedure”, although such a mechanism is not provided for in EU rules.
The process of a country’s accession to the EU requires the negotiation of a very detailed reform plan that normally takes several years.
Currently, Albania, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Turkey are formally recognized as candidate countries.
In the case of Turkey, negotiations have been going on for more than two decades, although they have been virtually paralyzed since 2016.
The last country to join the EU was Croatia, in 2013, although the negotiations began eight years earlier, in 2005, and the last chapters were sealed in 2011.
To issue an opinion, the European Commission does not have a defined deadline. In the case of Romania’s accession, which was completed in 2007, two years elapsed between the request for accession and the Commission’s opinion.
Source: Ambito
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