{"id":51011,"date":"2026-05-23T04:11:26","date_gmt":"2026-05-23T04:11:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/world\/associate-membership-could-block-ukraines-actual-accession-to-the-eu-irish-foreign-minister\/"},"modified":"2026-05-23T04:11:26","modified_gmt":"2026-05-23T04:11:26","slug":"associate-membership-could-block-ukraines-actual-accession-to-the-eu-irish-foreign-minister","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/world\/associate-membership-could-block-ukraines-actual-accession-to-the-eu-irish-foreign-minister\/","title":{"rendered":"Associate membership could block Ukraine&apos;s actual accession to the EU &#8211; Irish Foreign Minister"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Irish Minister for Foreign Affairs Helen McEntee has warned that granting Ukraine &quot;associate membership&quot; in the European Union could block the country&#039;s actual accession and leave Kyiv in a state of uncertainty regarding its aspirations to join the EU as a full member. This was reported by Euronews, according to UNN.<\/p>\n<h2>Details<\/h2>\n<p>The publication indicates that these remarks came in response to an &quot;unprecedented&quot; plan by German Chancellor Friedrich Merz to create a tailored status for Ukraine, which, according to McEntee, could create a &quot;two-tier&quot; approach to EU membership.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>&quot;We need to make sure that there isn&#039;t a two-tier approach, or that we apply the accession process equally to every country. &#8230; Do associate members end up in a situation where they are in a bit of a limbo? Do countries end up in this kind of semi-membership that then doesn&#039;t naturally progress?&quot;<\/p>\n<p>said the Irish Foreign Minister.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The authors add that McEntee&#039;s remarks &quot;carry particular weight&quot; as Ireland prepares for the Presidency of the Council of the EU in July and will therefore oversee negotiations regarding Kyiv&#039;s membership bid.<\/p>\n<h2>Context<\/h2>\n<p>Recently, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz proposed granting Ukraine a direct role in European Union structures as an interim step toward EU membership, which he said could help facilitate a deal to end the war caused by Russia&#039;s invasion.<\/p>\n<p>Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico rejected Merz&#039;s proposal to make Ukraine an &quot;associate member&quot; of the EU. According to him, &quot;either we take someone in, or we don&#039;t.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>Ukraine plans to open the first negotiation cluster for EU accession on May 26 &#8211; MFA12.05.26, 16:12 \u2022 3254 views<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Irish Minister for Foreign Affairs Helen McEntee has warned that granting Ukraine &quot;associate membership&quot; in the European Union could block the country&#039;s actual accession and leave Kyiv in a state of uncertainty regarding its aspirations to join the EU as a full member. This was reported by Euronews, according to UNN. Details The publication indicates [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":51012,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-51011","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51011","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51011"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51011\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/51012"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51011"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51011"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51011"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}