Ursula von der Leyen has raised the bar.

After a visit to Kyiv at the weekend, the EU Commission President spoke of an imminent “historic decision”.

It was about the next enlargement of the European Union.

Should Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia now be recognized as candidate countries?

"I hope that in 20 years, when we look back, we can say that we did the right thing," von der Leyen said.

The decision on this lies with the member states, whose heads of state and government will meet on Thursday next week.

The topic will certainly also be raised during the visit of Chancellor Scholz, French President Macron and Italian Prime Minister Draghi to Kyiv this Thursday.

Thomas Gutschker

Political correspondent for the European Union, NATO and the Benelux countries based in Brussels.

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On Friday she intends to give her recommendation for the three aspiring members who submitted their applications at the beginning of March.

Commission officials have since checked out the so-called Copenhagen criteria.

They were drawn up in 1993 to provide orientation for the enlargement by eight East Central European states.

The criteria relate to politics, economics and the ability to incorporate the Union's legal "acquis" into national law.

The applicants for membership answered questionnaires.

On this basis, the Commission has produced a fact-based report - in all cases faster than ever before.

This process usually takes twelve to eighteen months.

It will also make its own political assessment of how to proceed.

There are three options for this.

First, the Commission may come to the conclusion that it needs more information before any judgment can be reached.

Secondly, it can recommend the immediate opening of accession negotiations.

Third, it can link this to reform requirements.

This is what happened with Bosnia-Hercegovina in 2019.

Then Brussels identified fourteen priorities as a precondition for being recognized as a candidate country.

The country is still waiting for that.

To date, it is therefore only a "potential candidate".

Leyen: "You belong to us"

In Kyiv, Ursula von der Leyen gave some hints about where she sees Ukraine.

On the one hand, she praised the well-established presidential democracy with "robust and well-established institutions" whose administration works at all levels - even in times of war.

On the other hand, she spoke of further necessary reforms, for example in the modernization of the administration and in the fight against corruption.

It remains unclear whether she considers such reforms a prerequisite for candidate status.

This is a question of political evaluation.

There are also different views on this in the Commission.

Enlargement Commissioner Olivér Várhelyi is said to be more skeptical than his boss.

This campaigned early on for the country to join the European Union.

"They belong to us and we want them inside," she said just four days after the Russian attack.

She has publicly linked the country's reconstruction with far-reaching reforms that will bring the country into the European Union.

There is an established method for this: The accession negotiations are divided into more than thirty thematic chapters, the legal status is “screened”, and then the takeover is worked on step by step.

In the end, some exceptions and transitional periods can be agreed.

Nobody in Brussels would be surprised if von der Leyen now recommended this path, without prior conditions, at least for Ukraine.

Of course, this does not mean that the Member States follow their recommendation.

Considerable resistance was already evident at the last European Council at the end of May.

According to a senior EU official, "eight to nine" leaders in the Ukraine debate made it clear that they would not be eligible for unconditional candidate status.

Among them are said to have been Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte and Portuguese Prime Minister António Costa.

Scholz is particularly committed to the countries of the Western Balkans, which have been waiting in line for accession for a long time and are hardly making any progress.

He warned against raising false expectations in Kyiv.

Rutte revealed his concerns in a parliamentary debate and brought up "potential candidate status".

Costa told the Financial Times on Tuesday that Ukraine urgently needs support, "but we don't have to open any negotiations or procedures for that at the moment, which will take many years."

Delicate balancing act for Brussels

French President Emmanuel Macron is also counted among the skeptics.

While he hasn't ruled out a quick candidate status for Kyiv, he did point out that it would take "decades" to complete the negotiations.

That is why he brought up a “European political community” as a kind of catchment area for countries that cannot (yet) or do not want to join the Union.

The heads of state and government will also talk about this for the first time when they meet in Brussels next week.

They will first exchange views with the Western Balkan countries, which have also been invited and fear that such a union should only keep them at a distance from full membership.

The European Union is therefore faced with a delicate balancing act.

It must not disappoint those who have been candidates for a long time, nor Ukraine, which pays with blood to defend European values.

However, as always, domestic political considerations in the member states also play a role.

And there, above all in the West and in the North, there is still great skepticism about further expansion of the Union.