Michel marks 2030 as the year of the next major enlargement of the EU, including Ukraine’s accession

The President of the European Council, Charles Michel, has specified 2030 as the year it should take place the next great enlargement of the European Unionincluding the accession of Ukraine and six other Balkan countries that already hold candidate status.

This was stated on Monday during his speech at the strategic forum in Bled (Slovenia), where he stressed that the “solidarity” is at the heart of European integration and is what makes the EU “stronger”, which is why he believes that it is time to make progress in the enlargement negotiations.

Aware that the “slowness” of the path towards the EU has “disappointed many”, both in the Balkans as within the EU itself, Michel has paraphrased the German Chancellor, Olaf Scholz, to highlight that the Union must keep its promises.

The President of the Council also referred to the attack on the sovereignty of Ukraine by the Kremlin to remember that Russia has not only attacked a neighbor, but “everything” in which the EU believes and defends, and has appealed to put into practice the lessons learned and act now with the same “decision” that was already done to respond to the start of the war or the covid-19 pandemic.

As the President of the European Council has advanced, the negotiations on the enlargement of the EU and the calendar that he has proposed this Tuesday will be discussed at the next summit, scheduled for October 26 and 27 in Brusselsand in which he hopes that Bosnia and Herzegovina and Georgia “are back on the table.”