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00:00 Let's get more from our European Affairs Editor, Amon Georgian.
00:02 Amon, what's the European Commission recommending exactly?
00:06 And is it prioritising some candidate countries over others?
00:09 Well, officially, Tom, there's no favourites.
00:11 Everyone has to go through the same process.
00:13 It's a long negotiation to transpose what's known as the acquis communautaire,
00:18 which is the whole body of EU law, international legislation.
00:22 So it's a law.
00:25 It's a long negotiation focused on legal affairs, essentially.
00:30 Having said that, there is, of course, a political dimension
00:32 when it comes to Ukraine and Moldova.
00:34 These are the two countries that the European Commission and the EU
00:38 Council have consistently sent messages of support to over the last year
00:43 and a half, and for security reasons, they want to bring these two countries
00:49 into the European family as soon as it's possible,
00:52 as long as the criteria are met, of course.
00:56 And some have said that the EU missed an opportunity to bring
00:59 the former Yugoslav states into the EU after the conflict there in the 1990s.
01:06 And therefore, the EU should not make that same strategic error now.
01:11 Speaking of the Western Balkans, you mentioned Bosnia.
01:13 The European Commission does recognise a number of what it calls positive,
01:19 political and legal steps in Bosnia, and it is recommending a start
01:24 to accession negotiations, but there are still some hurdles, clearly.
01:29 So it's a kind of cautious yes or a yes, but to Bosnia.
01:34 OK, let's just talk specifically about Ukraine.
01:37 I mean, of course, it's a nation at war, isn't it?
01:39 Is there any indication as to how long the whole accession process would take?
01:44 Not not at all.
01:45 I mean, you've had some EU officials like the president of the European Council,
01:50 which has put a date of the next wave of enlargement 2030.
01:55 But, you know, that's kind of pie in the sky, really, because nobody knows,
02:00 especially with Ukraine.
02:01 If you think of Turkey, it's been negotiating on and off since 2005.
02:05 So that's now what, 18 years.
02:08 So it's very, very hard to predict.
02:10 When it comes to Ukraine, there are different viewpoints
02:14 among EU member states, some wanting what they call a gradual accession.
02:18 So they've been talking about, for example,
02:21 partial access to the single market, but initially excluding
02:25 agriculture and food.
02:28 Others want sort of a whole package to come into force all at once.
02:33 But I think there's a recognition that nothing is that none of these things
02:37 are actually going to come to a head concretely very soon.
02:42 And so the nitty gritty, in a way, can be put off to some extent.
02:47 I mean, first of all, the EU Council has to sign off on all of this
02:51 in mid-December and give its green light, if you will.
02:55 I think the bottom line is that the EU doesn't want to have
02:58 too much of a public debate or air its differences too publicly
03:03 because the EU thinks that doing that would simply be
03:07 sort of ammunition to the Kremlin.
03:09 I mean, we saw when Slovakia held its parliamentary election,
03:12 which was won by Robert Fico on a platform of ending military aid to Ukraine.
03:18 Russian media pounced on that.
03:20 There was one headline I remember which said
03:22 after the Slovakian election, another EU country that doesn't like Ukraine.
03:29 So I think the EU is quite careful about not trying,
03:33 trying not to air its internal differences about Ukraine's accession,
03:38 at least not too much in public.
03:40 There must be music to the ears of many in Russia.
03:43 Thank you very much indeed.
03:44 Armin Georgian, our European Affairs Editor, I should say.