A record EU assessment despite stalled reforms: what's behind Brussels' optimism on Ukraine
Ukraine will overcome the parliamentary deadlock. Members of Parliament will come to their senses and realise that, through their actions and inaction, Ukraine is voluntarily allowing Moldova to overtake it on the path to EU membership. As a result, Ukraine will fulfil all IBAR indicators in the first quarter of the year, receive the right to close negotiation chapters, and begin doing so in the first half of the year.
This is a brief summary of the European Commission's forecasts and plans, published alongside its annual Enlargement Report.
This report is the main document of the year assessing the progress (or lack thereof) made by candidate countries. For the first time in its history, the European Commission has presented roadmaps for the next stages of the enlargement process, additionally to the report, for the four most advanced candidate countries, including Ukraine.
In Ukraine's case, this document is clearly more optimistic than expected and certainly more ambitious than the pace of reforms demonstrated by Kyiv. Brussels, however, explains that it sees an acceleration in the process and expects this trend to continue.
For now, the European Commission has set an expected date for signing the accession treaty only for Montenegro: June 2027. No predictions have been made regarding the final accession dates for the other candidates.
The decision to leave the timeline open was largely driven by Ukraine.
A draft containing dates had been prepared, but the European Commission received signals from EU member states that room should be left for Ukraine to accelerate its progress. After all, Ukraine is currently falling behind Moldova. The Commission agreed that it would be politically inappropriate to issue an assessment suggesting that Moldova could join the EU earlier.
Nevertheless, Moldova is clearly more advanced in terms of reforms, and the approved documents confirm this.
The Enlargement Report also sends optimistic signals to Ukraine. This is another surprise and another important message for Kyiv. The document presents a paradoxical situation. The European Commission acknowledges that reforms in Ukraine have slowed significantly over the past year, yet its assessment of Ukraine's readiness for EU membership has improved, recording the largest increase in the country's history. This includes the critical Fundamentals chapters.
Brussels, however, offers a logical explanation for this phenomenon.
In particular, regarding anti-corruption efforts, the European Commission explained that the improved assessment was not the result of government action, but rather happened despite it. This is because the EU takes into account not only legislative changes but also the work of Ukrainian civil society, the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) and the Specialised Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office (SAPO).
The document also sets out the tasks Ukraine must accomplish if it hopes to remain among the four leading candidates.
Just a few years ago, when Ukraine was only moving towards opening accession negotiations, the EU was engaged in a debate about whether it could cope with such a significant enlargement. The institutional challenge was considered to involve not only admitting Ukraine, the largest candidate country, but also integrating ten new states (which would mean ten additional leaders in the European Council, new official languages, and so on).
Recently, the EU has begun distinguishing between serious and nominal candidate countries.
This distinction has now been formalised, helping the EU acknowledge that it is already ready for enlargement.
The European Commission has identified four promising candidates with the agreement of all member states: Montenegro, Albania, Moldova and Ukraine. On 4 November, roadmaps and timelines were presented in Brussels, outlining how each country is expected to progress towards EU membership.
Ukraine has not yet completed the opening of all negotiation clusters. The two remaining clusters, the most difficult, are awaiting Hungary's approval. Nevertheless, all of the European Pravda's sources in Kyiv and Brussels are confident that this will happen by the end of 2026. Officials in Brussels say they have received positive signals from the Hungarian side. Although the European Commission cannot issue instructions to member states, its roadmap for Ukraine "insists on/calls for making every effort" to open the remaining clusters by the end of 2026.
But the most ambitious target for Ukraine has been set for 2027.
The European Commission expects Ukraine to receive a positive assessment of its fulfilment of the IBAR benchmarks (the Fundamentals benchmarks) in the first half of that year. This will allow Kyiv to move on to closing accession negotiation chapters.
The roadmap aims for Ukraine to close seven negotiation chapters in 2027 (education and culture; intellectual property; social policy; enterprise and industrial policy; science and research; external relations; foreign, security and defence policy).
The Commission wants the first of these chapters to be closed in the first half of the year. It means Ukraine must complete the necessary IBAR reforms and submit its report to Brussels as early as April, or at the latest in early May.
Kyiv is even more ambitious. Ihor Zhovkva, Deputy Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine, stated at the Accession Exchange Forum on 4 November that Ukraine plans to receive a positive IBAR assessment as early as March and to close several chapters, rather than just one, by mid-2027, as expected by the European Commission. The Ukrainian roadmap explicitly provides for this possibility if Ukraine progresses faster than anticipated.
But the current pace of reforms in Ukraine suggests that even the European Commission's plans are extremely ambitious.
A study by the Ukrainian Centre for European Policy indicates that since June, when the first cluster was opened, Kyiv has completed only 20% of the tasks required for IBAR.
This means that Ukraine must complete the remaining 80% in the same amount of time. This will be very challenging politically. IBAR includes all tasks related to the rule of law and the fight against corruption contained in the "Kachka-Kos list". [In December 2025, the Ukrainian government made written commitments to the EU regarding urgent key reforms in the areas of the rule of law and anti-corruption. The plan was signed on Ukraine’s behalf by Taras Kachka, Deputy Prime Minister for European Integration, and became unofficially known as the "10 Kachka-Kos points".]
The latest published assessment, released in June, of Parliament's implementation of the Kachka-Kos list gave it just 15 points out of 100. European Pravda is aware of more recent assessments that were not made public due to the lack of progress. These indicate that the current score would be slightly above 20 points.
What gives the European Commission grounds for such optimistic expectations? To answer this question, it is worth first looking at the other leading candidate countries.
First and foremost – at Moldova.
The introductory and descriptive sections of the roadmaps for Ukraine and Moldova are practically identical. However, the specific details allow us to draw one conclusion:
The EU acknowledges that Moldova has overtaken Ukraine.
Overall, the European Commission has not attempted to hide the fact that it has its own ranking within the group of four.
Montenegro is in the lead, as it is already almost ready to sign its accession treaty. Albania is in second place, with Brussels describing its negotiations as "advanced".
Moldova comes next, currently considered "well advanced" in meeting the interim benchmarks. Several sources have told European Pravda that the European Commission has prepared a positive IBAR assessment and is expected to send it to member states for approval soon. Marta Kos, the European Enlargement Commissioner, could announce this at any moment.
The European Commission's plans for the next stages of negotiations are particularly telling. For Ukraine, the roadmap envisages beginning to close negotiation chapters towards the end of the first quarter (although, given Kyiv's limited current progress in meeting IBAR requirements, even this seems ambitious). For Moldova, the plan is to close nine chapters in the first half of 2027 and another 16 by the end of the year – a total of 25 chapters in one year.
For Albania, the plan is to close all 31 remaining negotiation chapters, as well as Cluster 1, by the end of the year. In fact, this means Albania could spend 2028 preparing its accession treaty.
However, no specific target year for completing negotiations has been announced for either Moldova or Albania, although the European Commission had initially planned to do so.
According to European Pravda, this decision was made in Ukraine's interests. It would be politically unwise to further emphasise that Moldova will be ready for EU membership before Ukraine. After all, the EU is prepared to demonstrate in every possible way its desire to include Ukraine in this wave of enlargement, provided that reforms progress.
The Enlargement Report illustrates this further.
Ukraine has been included in the European enlargement report for the fourth consecutive year.
And if any of these four reports can be considered successful for Ukraine, it is the current one.
European Pravda prepares an illustration every year showing Ukraine's progress towards EU membership.
This year's illustration requires some additional explanation.
It has never before seen such progress in the European Commission's assessment of Ukraine's readiness for membership. The progress is still insufficient for a country hoping to join the EU within the next few years, but it is greater than ever before. The overall assessment across the 33 negotiation chapters has increased by 4.5 points, with half a point of progress in each of nine chapters.
The fact that the increase was limited to ju
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5 of November 2026
