Lithuanian parlt committee urges start of EU accession talks with Ukraine, Moldova

VILNIUS – Lithuania's parliamentary Committee on Foreign Affairs (CFA) on Wednesday issued a statement urging EU member states to give the green light at the European Council's summit in December for opening accession negotiations with Ukraine and Moldova. 

"The Committee members underlined in particular Ukraine's determination to join the EU," the committee said in a press release, noting that Kyiv "has been able to implement 90 percent of the necessary steps during the war".  

"Moldova has also made significant progress in implementing key reforms under difficult circumstances," it said. 

The committee believes that the EU's response to the progress made by the two countries must be a decision by the bloc's leaders to start membership negotiations with the candidates by the end of this year.

In the committee's opinion, the overall package should endorse the European Commission's proposals to grant candidate status to Georgia and to open accession negotiations with Bosnia and Herzegovina once it has reached the required level of compliance. 

"I believe that today we probably had this year's most important meeting of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, where we had a great honor of approving the (European) Commission's recommendations for EU expansion to the East – for the first time in almost two decades," Zygimantas Pavilionis, the CFA chairman, was quoted as saying in the press release.  

In November, the EU's executive body recommended opening formal accession negotiations with Ukraine and Moldova and granting candidate status to Georgia. 

In their summit in Brussels in mid-December, EU leaders are expected to announce whether the bloc is starting talks on taking in new members.