Zelenskyy has to be ambitious with EU, or he’ll get no response: an interview with Irish leader

28.07.2026, 14:19 eurointegration.com.ua

All EU member states are equal when it comes to enlargement, and Ukraine knows this all too well from its experience with Viktor Orbán, whose government single-handedly blocked its accession process.

There is, however, one member state that enjoys a special role and unique opportunities.

That is the country holding the rotating Presidency of the Council of the European Union. It chairs meetings of many EU bodies, helps set their agendas, and can either actively push an issue forward or quietly let it stall.

Since 1 July, the EU Council Presidency has been held by Ireland, which is firmly committed to opening all the negotiating clusters for Ukraine and has a plan for achieving that. Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Micheál Martin, who visited Kyiv this week, spoke about that plan, as well as Ukraine's approach to the accession process and the key tasks that lie ahead for Kyiv.

Taoiseach, I am glad to see you here in Kyiv. Is this your second time here?

Third time.

I came after the outbreak of the war in my capacity as Taoiseach.

And then after about two and a half years being Taoiseach, I came back as foreign minister with the Foreign Affairs Council, when we all came together.

And now I'm back a third time as Taoiseach of the country again.

Cool! Let me start with a general question about the European Union. Why does the EU need Ukraine?

I think the European Union needs Ukraine, and Ukraine needs the EU, because we share a lot of common values in terms of democracy, fundamental rights, freedom of association – things that are important.

I believe that if we don't have enlargement in the neighbourhood, other things will happen – other bad things will happen. Russia, for example, will exploit a vacuum. They have exploited a vacuum and they've invaded Ukraine and they've violated the territorial integrity of Ukraine, which has implications for Europe and other parts of the continent.

The Presidency plays a special role in the enlargement process. Of course it doesn't make decisions on its own, but it helps shape the agenda. What are your expectations for the next six months?

What we want to achieve is that all clusters pertaining to Ukraine will be opened by the end of the year. That is our agenda.

Last week we were successful in opening Cluster 6. Cyprus had opened Cluster 1.

Our next target is Clusters 2 and 3, as soon as possible, and then the remainder by the end of the year.

Obviously we've a lot of work to do with other member states – we have to persuade people. But we have set this as our target.

We have made Ukraine a priority of the Irish presidency.

And the enlargement of others – Montenegro is close, we want to close all the remaining chapters for Montenegro.

And Moldova is important. Moldova is coupled with Ukraine right now.

We have closed some chapters for Albania last week, which is positive.

We want to get a cluster opened in relation to Serbia as well.

You've suggested opening Clusters 2 and 3 first, and then Clusters 4 and 5. We've been told several times that Ukraine is ready for all the clusters. Why not open them all at once? What is the reason for postponing them?

I think there are two aspects to that. First of all, it's not we deciding to postpone anything. We believe this is realistic.

And obviously there are ongoing reforms – this is a merit-based process.

Ukraine has made enormous strides, and the Commission president has said this. But there is need for more reforms, of course, on rule of law, anti-corruption, and so on.

Ukraine has made great progress. But we have to persuade others as well.

And if you consider the period before the Russian invasion, enlargement was in cold storage to a large extent. Quite a number of countries in the Western Balkans, for example, came close but didn't quite get over the line. We're very conscious of that.

But since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, I think the atmosphere has changed. But there are still challenges and people still want to reflect on it and so on.

We think our programme is realistic.

So does that mean Ukraine still has to fulfil certain conditions before the Council is ready to open all the clusters?

There are ongoing issues that every country applying to join the European Union has to benchmark themselves against and make sure that they achieve.

The Kachka-Kos 10-point list and plan – those are there to be engaged with.

I had good meetings today with President Zelenskyy, with the prime minister, the Speaker of Parliament – all of them are focused on reforms, and they know that it's important that the reforms get done as part of the accession process.

But also, across the Union more broadly, I think it's important to bring people with you, and different member states have different approaches to enlargement.

We'll come back to the Kachka-Kos plan later. First, I'd like to ask about how you see Ukraine's overall approach. Some people say President Zelenskyy is being overly optimistic about Ukraine's EU accession timeline and has set goals that may be difficult to achieve.

I take a different view to that. I think President Zelenskyy has been very forthright, ambitious, determined, and he perseveres, and that's important. If people don’t see someone with ambition coming forward, they're not going to respond in an ambitious way.

He doesn't leave much room for people to hide on the question.

So that's a plus, that's a positive, in my view, because he has been relentless in pursuing this on behalf of the Ukrainian people.

And in our view, enlargement is a key part of the struggle of the Ukrainian people, because it's what people aspire to.

It's interesting to hear you say that ambition is a good thing. In Ukraine, we tend to share that view. Do you think most EU leaders share this view?

The majority do, but not all.

Others are worried, others have different views. There has to be political realism at times, there's no question about that.

But from Ukraine's perspective, I think there's an obligation on your leadership to be ambitious and to push strongly. Otherwise you do not get the response. That is why I think President Zelenskyy has been correct in his approach in pushing very strongly for this.

There are several ideas being discussed in the EU. One was proposed by Chancellor Merz, then there was the French-German non-paper and the Lithuanian proposal. Which of these do you think is most likely to become the basis for future changes to the enlargement process?

From the Irish perspective, we will facilitate discussion on those ideas, but we will not be distracted from the merit-based approach and from the present system of joining the European Union.

We will continue to pursue the opening of clusters, the closing of clusters, closing of chapters.

But we will also facilitate a discussion.

One interesting positive from those ideas is that people are now beginning to think about enlargement – what does it mean? Because for a long time, enlargement was dormant, as I said earlier, before the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Now people are beginning to sort of say: "Okay, enlargement is coming. How do we manage it?" In one way, if you stand back, that's a positive. And so people are thinking: are there other mechanisms to facilitate a country's progress to enlargement?

There was an informal discussion of this in the Western Balkan summit with the European Union, and some of the impetus came from some of the Western Balkan countries. I found it quite interesting.

But from our perspective in Ireland and the presidency, we cannot be distracted.

You know, Montenegro is in the business now of closing its chapters. We feel we can close all its chapters by the end of the year. We believe we can open all the clusters for Ukraine and Moldova and do more work for Albania, Serbia and others.

So we will not be distracted from that, but of course, parallel with that, it makes sense that there will be these discussions.

Which do you think will come first – the end of the war, or Ukraine's accession to the European Union?

Well, we hope for the end of the war.

I cannot tell you the timeline for that right now, but I would hope that it would be soon. I think even a ceasefire would be very, very welcome.

I visited some of the sites that have been subject to missile attacks. I've met residents who've been made homeless because of attacks on their apartments. We are shocked that this level of attack on civilian infrastructure can happen.

So we would hope and pray that the war would end very, very quickly. And I would pray that it would end before accession.

But will it still be possible for Ukraine to join the EU if the war is protracted? Or perhaps achieve some form of political accession before the war is over?

That suggests the war will go on for a long, long time and I don't want to comprehend that, but it is possible in the sense that if you stand back and look at the level of engagement between Europe and Ukraine already, it's been quite accelerated, quite extraordinary.

Use of the SAFE [Security Action for Europe] programme, Ukraine's progression on the defence industry, for example. Look at the €90 billion borrowing by the European Union for Ukraine. There's been tremendous support from EU member states of Ukraine.

To a certain degree, there's been already a degree of engagement between Ukraine and the European Union that's unprecedented.

Do you see any realistic chance of changing the enlargement procedure, which currently requires unanimity among EU member states at every stage? There has been discussion about reforming this. Is it politically feasible?

It's very difficult. It's very difficult.

We have a window now, particularly with the change of government in Hungary. And we all need to work constructively with the Hungarian government as well. And the European institutions are, and we are.

But there are different government changes in other member states as well. And we will engage with those.

Giving up the unanimity is difficult, particularly when it comes