Why EU Leaders Are Having Second Thoughts About Admitting Ukraine

By John Gustavsson

Saturday, February 07, 2026

 

Ukraine has made no secret of its desire to join the European Union. Recently, President Volodymyr Zelensky made it clear that EU membership is one of the “security guarantees” that he and his country are seeking to end the war with Russia, aiming for an accession date in 2027. While EU membership is an understandable aspiration for Ukraine, an increasing number of European leaders are realizing that having Ukraine join the union prematurely would be a mistake, both for the country and for the union.

 

In the early days of the war, few European leaders raised any objections to the idea of fast-tracking Ukraine’s membership application, and it was widely assumed that Hungary would be the only major stumbling block to Ukraine’s accession. Now, though, skepticism appears to be growing, with leaders including German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani recently outright dismissing talk of Ukraine joining the EU in 2027, with the former stating that Ukraine is unlikely to join before 2034.

 

They are right to be dismissive. While Ukraine should be economically integrated with the European Union’s single market, there are several reasons why full EU membership would, at this point, risk backfiring both for the EU and for Ukraine.

 

While Ukraine’s large agricultural sector would help to lower food prices for struggling European consumers, it would also constitute a serious burden to the EU’s budget. Under the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), between a quarter and a third of the EU’s budget, adjusted from year to year, goes towards agricultural subsidies. Under current rules, Ukrainian farmers would be entitled to more subsidies than any other EU member, thanks to its excellent black soil and large agricultural sector. This would necessitate either increasing the EU’s budget — an inevitably controversial move, particularly among Northern and Western member states — or a 20 percent cut in subsidies to everyone else. The latter is something that would not be well received by other large recipients of said subsidies, such as Italy, Poland, and Spain.

 

Making matters more difficult, CAP has already been heavily criticized for providing an unfair advantage to less developed EU countries, where environmental and animal welfare standards are lower and the subsidies provide a much greater share of gross farm revenue. If a large, poor country like Ukraine were to join the EU, this debate would be reignited.

 

The fact is that Ukraine is very poor. Even before the war, Bulgaria, the poorest EU member, had a GDP per capita that was two and a half times higher than Ukraine’s. Ukraine’s comparative poverty creates a problem for the EU’s cohesion policy, which takes up roughly another third of its budget. Cohesion policy funds are intended to develop the union’s poorest regions, and while these funds are capped by the EU at 2.3 percent of GDP of the receiving country, Ukraine would still be among the very top recipients in the EU. Ukrainian EU membership would lead to many regions that are currently receiving funds no longer being underdeveloped enough to qualify, something that in turn would trigger political backlash.

 

Ukraine’s accession to the EU would also result in an eastward shift in the union’s balance of power — one that would likely be unwelcome to progressive bureaucrats in Brussels. With a pre-war population of over 40 million, Ukraine would be the largest Eastern European member state and the fifth-largest member state overall; its influence in the European Parliament and other institutions would reflect this. With the EU already having a complicated relationship with some of its larger eastern members, it should not come as a surprise that the prospect of a further geographic shift in influence is not one that has Brussels policymakers jumping for joy. Enthusiasm is further tempered by the uncertainty over what Ukrainian politics will look like after the war. Progressive European bureaucrats don’t want to accidentally admit another Hungary.

 

It may seem that these are all problems for the EU rather than for Ukraine. But there are also good reasons why, right now, EU membership would be bad for Ukraine.

 

More than 4 million Ukrainians reside in the EU as refugees. Under the Temporary Protection Directive, Ukrainians are free to seek refuge anywhere in the EU without having to go through the process of applying for asylum. But, as the name implies, this protection is only temporary and will be rescinded after the war’s conclusion.

 

Yet if Ukraine were to join the EU immediately or shortly after the end of the war, these refugees would be free to stay in their new countries. Furthermore, even more Ukrainians would be free to leave and take advantage of the EU’s freedom of movement. Many young and skilled Ukrainian emigrants who are desperately needed to rebuild their homeland would no doubt decline to return.

 

Some have countered that EU membership would boost Ukrainian growth, thus attracting the diaspora to return. Sadly, this is wishful thinking: Poland’s population is still below what it was in 2004 when it joined the EU, and it is still falling, despite Poland long being one of the EU’s fastest-growing economies. The same holds true for Romania and Bulgaria, which have both seen excellent economic growth since joining in 2007 but have lost significant proportions of their populations to emigration.

 

A large and sudden influx of EU money may also prove to be a curse as much as a blessing. While corruption levels in Ukraine have been vastly exaggerated by pro-Russian voices such as Tucker Carlson, corruption remains a real problem and is indeed worse than in any current EU member state. In a worst-case scenario, an influx of subsidies and grants from the EU could serve to supercharge existing corruption, unless Ukraine is able to establish sufficient anti-corruption safeguards prior to joining. Much remains to be done on the corruption front, and this work will almost certainly take several years.

 

There are also more basic, prudential reasons for Ukraine to hold off on joining. As in most Eastern European countries, pro-EU sentiment in Ukraine has grown as a response to Russian actions. Much of the recent surge in support for the EU stems from a war-induced wish to break free from Russia’s sphere of influence. Consider, for example, that prior to Russia’s 2014 occupation of Crimea, polls consistently found Ukrainian support for EU membership to be below a majority.

 

While their westward aspirations are valid and admirable, Ukrainians should be mindful of the practical implications of EU membership. Much of the friction between the EU and its eastern member states stems from these states having not realized just how much sovereignty they cede upon joining the union (and not realizing that the EU will always ask for more). And, as Britain has demonstrated, once you are in, it is very hard to leave.

 

For now, Ukraine should aim for deeper integration into the EU’s single market — though, crucially, without freedom of movement. While Brussels has historically refused to grant full access to the single market without attaching free movement (as it considers the “four freedoms” inseparable), Ukraine is clearly a special case. At present, neither Ukraine nor the EU would benefit from free movement; Ukraine needs its people back, and allowing them to stay would risk exacerbating already growing tensions in countries with large numbers of Ukrainian refugees. Under a comprehensive arrangement modeled after nonmembers such as Norway and Switzerland, Ukraine could see its businesses and farmers granted access to the 450 million consumers in the single market while, importantly for Europe, remaining unable to access EU funds and representation.

 

Ultimately, the case against a premature EU accession is at least as much about protecting Ukraine’s own reconstruction as it is about sparing the union fiscal and political strain. A hasty EU entry risks entangling Ukraine in bureaucratic webs that are ill-suited to its postwar needs. Prioritizing single-market integration without full obligations, on the other hand, would help ensure economic vitality, stem the brain drain, and allow Ukraine to retain the sovereignty it has fought so hard to protect. Above all, this more prudent approach would allow Kyiv to channel its political capital into securing the kind of hard security guarantees that no EU treaty can ever hope to replace.