Hungary may lift its veto on two clusters for Ukraine – everything hinges on the Rada's vote on 12 October

A procedural but important step

Hungary may stop blocking the next stage of Ukraine’s EU accession talks this week. As the Financial Times reports, citing two officials (via Ukrinform), Hungarian Prime Minister Péter Magyar has instructed Hungarian diplomats not to block letters to Ukraine and Moldova on the possible opening of the next two negotiating clusters. These are the clusters covering the internal market and competitiveness.

The FT’s sources call it a procedural but symbolically important step. At the same time, Budapest’s final political support will depend on whether the Verkhovna Rada adopts a law expanding the educational rights of national minorities on 12 October. According to the FT, the bill was drafted taking into account proposals and comments from the Hungarian side. Its adoption would allow the formal political process to start before the EU leaders’ summit in Brussels in about ten days.

“Ukraine’s path to accession is taking clear shape, with respect for the process and realism,” an EU official familiar with the talks with Budapest told the FT.

Kos: “possibly as early as next week”

EU Enlargement Commissioner Marta Kos said in Brussels on 5 October that the EU hopes the minorities law will be adopted. After that, she said, member states should speed up the procedure. “It is quite possible that we will open the next two clusters for Moldova and Ukraine as early as next week during the intergovernmental conferences in Luxembourg,” Kos said.

In Kos’s assessment, both Ukraine and Moldova are “delivering results in very difficult conditions” and are among the front-runners of the four candidate countries. She also noted that details of the proposed path for candidate countries will be set out in the enlargement report due on 28 October. “We must never forget: Ukraine is a country fighting for survival,” the commissioner stressed.

What the bill proposes

The bill on the education of national minorities was submitted to the Rada on 1 October, and Magyar welcomed it. The chair of the parliamentary education committee, Serhii Babak, told Suspilne that the document sets compromise criteria: a school will be able to obtain the status of a national-minority school if more than 50% of its pupils are taught in that community’s language, and the status will not be lost automatically if the share dips slightly. The bill also regulates the use of the minority language between pupils or with a teacher during breaks. “For Ukrainians nothing changes at all,” Babak said.

Verkhovna Rada Speaker Ruslan Stefanchuk confirmed that on 12 October parliament plans to adopt two bills that “will help Hungary unblock the negotiating clusters for us”. “We have already found common ground,” he said in Chernivtsi. Stefanchuk added that before a vote the bills must go through committees and discussions, because bringing unfinished documents to the floor, in his words, “is even worse than not bringing them at all”.

What lies ahead

If agreement is reached on these two clusters, two more will remain outstanding – on green policy, agriculture and cohesion. The European Commission hopes to agree on them by the end of the year. The “Fundamentals” and “External Relations” clusters for Ukraine and Moldova were opened in June and July respectively.

Transcarpathian expert Yosyp Rezesh warned on Suspilne against inflated expectations: education is only one of 11 points in the talks between Ukraine and Hungary, and opening clusters is “just one small step” on the road to membership.