LUXEMBOURG — Ukraine celebrated the opening of two more EU enlargement clusters at a ceremony in Luxembourg on Oct. 13, a key milestone in the process to eventually become a member state.
Ukraine and Moldova have been advancing their EU membership bids in tandem and are currently trying to open all six of the bloc's enlargement clusters — to-do lists of reforms that must be completed to join the bloc.
On Oct. 13, Ukraine unlocked clusters 2 and 3, titled "internal market" and "competitiveness" respectively. They are the two largest clusters by number of policy files.
Moldova is expected to follow suit roughly an hour later with its own ceremony.
The move was made possible the day after the Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine's parliament, passed a law bolstering the rights of the country's Hungarian-speaking minority — a demand that Hungary had said must be fulfilled before it would allow further progress.
In June, Kyiv and Chisinau opened the first cluster, on the rule of law, followed by another on external relations in July.
That leaves only two clusters remaining to be opened, which the European Commission and the Irish Council Presidency of the EU hope to be done with by the end of 2026.
The two remaining clusters risk being harder to get through, as they encompass sectors of the economy such as agriculture and transport, where Ukraine has a competitive edge, and some EU countries fear losing out.
On Oct. 6, the European Commission issued a set of proposals on the future of EU enlargement, which also suggested that Ukraine's agricultural sector would require special treatment, to be handled during the enlargement process rather than used as a block on progress.
The EU's Enlargement Commissioner Marta Kos told the Kyiv Independent ahead of the opening of the clusters that "once Ukraine will be so far that we will think of what will go in the accession treaty, we will put down the solutions for both sides."
Kos was clear that the process needs to both protect European farmers and help Ukraine export to feed the world, all while Kyiv adopts EU standards.
But Kos' mention of the accession treaty, which is only being drafted near the very end of the EU enlargement process, indicates that she does not expect the strength of Ukraine's agricultural sector to be used as a reason to block progress at this stage.