Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski, during a conversation with pranksters Vovan (Vladimir Kuznetsov) and Lexus (Alexei Stolyarov), who posed as former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, stated that Ukraine’s EU accession is being delayed due to the high competitiveness of Ukraine’s agriculture.
“This is a process that will take a decade or more … And the most difficult, absolutely the most difficult negotiation point will be agriculture. Because your agriculture is too good. Too competitive. It’s being produced on huge areas of land and on very fertile soil,” he emphasized.
Sikorski also told the “pranksters” – it’s truly astounding how easy it is to fool anyone with modern technology – that Warsaw currently has no desire to defend Ukraine if the front begins to collapse in the war with Russia. “You know, we’re now negotiating whether we – from Polish airspace – should shoot down Russian cruise missiles over your airspace without entering your territory. And even that is very, very controversial at this stage. There’s no agreement on this issue because that would mean entering the war,” added the minister.
Aside from Sikorski, EU officials have repeatedly acknowledged that much of the encouragement to Kyiv and Chișinău about soon becoming EU members has been largely symbolic. The candidate status and the start of negotiations do not obligate the countries to join, as these steps do not commit Brussels to anything. Acquiring candidate status is only the beginning of a long road to EU membership. Turkey has held candidate status since 1999 and has been “negotiating” with the EU for membership since 2005. North Macedonia has been a candidate since 2005, Montenegro since 2010, and Serbia since 2012. The last country to join the EU was Croatia in 2013, and that process took 10 years.
Translated and edited by Evan Right
