But Costa\u2019s plan is proving controversial. While Orb\u00e1n is the EU leader closest to President Vladimir Putin and most hostile to Ukraine, other leaders have very different motives to join his side \u2014 mainly to defend their veto power.<\/p>\n
The plan faces pushback from several EU countries, including France, the Netherlands and Greece, and is unlikely to get wide approval in Denmark, according to three EU diplomats and a French presidency official who spoke to POLITICO on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive deliberations.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The concern among these countries is that by changing the accession rules, they would also be limiting their own ability to block membership bids they see as problematic, the same people said. That opens up a host of rivalries that Orb\u00e1n can play upon: It\u2019s important to the Greeks, for example, to show they can hold up talks on Turkey\u2019s membership, just as Bulgarians want to be able to draw the line on North Macedonia, and Croats to block Serbia. <\/p>\n
Costa\u2019s suggestion would open a path forward not just for Ukraine \u2014 whose bid has been held up for months due to Orb\u00e1n\u2019s veto \u2014 but also for Moldova, as the two countries\u2019 candidacies are linked.<\/p>\n
According to a senior EU official, Costa\u2019s proposal will be on the table in Copenhagen on Wednesday, along with another proposal to use frozen Russian assets to help Ukraine. \u201cNo leader to this day replied with a total \u2018no\u2019 to this idea,\u201d the senior official said, referring to Costa\u2019s rule-change proposal.<\/p>\n
Finnish President Alexander Stubb told POLITICO that he backed any attempt to speed up the process. \u201cAny decision-making mechanism which gives more flexibility and less possibility to block I personally welcome, and never more so than with Ukraine,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
But the camp opposing Costa and Stubb may prove too strong. And if the price of preserving the rules is that Ukraine and Moldova may have to wait months, if not years, to see their bids move forward, it\u2019s one that these countries are willing to pay.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"But Costa\u2019s plan is proving controversial. While Orb\u00e1n is the EU leader closest to President Vladimir Putin and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":465051,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7654],"tags":[10541,11783,13489,13490,8612,365,33,34,2000,299,36,17104,1450,111080,2190,11582,43,51099,13491,809,10545,8536,332,811,6567,461,657,1220,1781,2601],"class_list":{"0":"post-465050","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ukraine","8":"tag-albania","9":"tag-antonio-costa","10":"tag-bulgaria","11":"tag-croatia","12":"tag-cyprus","13":"tag-denmark","14":"tag-elections","15":"tag-emmanuel-macron","16":"tag-eu","17":"tag-europe","18":"tag-france","19":"tag-french-eu-presidency","20":"tag-greece","21":"tag-gregorio-sorgi","22":"tag-hungary","23":"tag-lobbying","24":"tag-macron","25":"tag-maia-sandu","26":"tag-moldova","27":"tag-negotiations","28":"tag-north-macedonia","29":"tag-recep-tayyip-erdogan","30":"tag-russia","31":"tag-security","32":"tag-serbia","33":"tag-turkey","34":"tag-ukraine","35":"tag-ursula-von-der-leyen","36":"tag-viktor-orban","37":"tag-volodymyr-zelenskyy"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115297458990611173","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465050","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=465050"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465050\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/465051"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=465050"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=465050"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=465050"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}