The war in Ukraine has not only redrawn the borders of European security; it has confronted the European Union with an existential question: what kind of project does it want to be? The prospect of Ukrainian accession, accelerated by the shock of the Russian invasion, is testing the EU’s entire decision-making architecture — from unanimity voting to cohesion funds, from CAP reform to the Union’s very capacity to absorb a country at war, with an economy to rebuild and institutions still being consolidated.
This panel examines the real state of Ukraine’s accession negotiations, caught between promises of geopolitical acceleration and the concrete resistance of some member states, and asks how the war has transformed — for better and for worse — the debate over the future of European integration. It will also address what it means for the EU to become, through Ukraine, a union of security and defence as well as an economic and regulatory one.
The discussion will offer the audience a reading of how the outcome of Ukraine’s path may redefine, more than any other single issue, the very identity of the European project in the decades ahead
