Crimea Platform: ‘EU Council will discuss the possibility of opening accession negotiations with Ukraine later this year’, says Charles Michel

Later this year, the European Council will discuss the possibility of opening accession negotiations with Ukraine, European Council President Charles Michel said yesterday at the Third Summit of the Crimea Platform.

“Last year Ukraine received EU candidate status. So your European Union future is no longer a question of if, it is a question of when,” Charles Michel said.

President Michel also said that two years ago he represented the EU at the first international summit of the Crimea Platform.

“I stated clearly that Ukraine’s territorial integrity must be fully restored. And this applied to Crimea and this applied to the region of Donetsk and Luhansk. And I stand by that today,” said Michel. “And last September, just like they did in Crimea, Russia tried to illegally annex Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, and this is again a cynical attempt to grab more land, to steal the identity of Ukrainian citizens, to abduct your children and to drive people from their homeland, like they are doing to the Tatars.”

According to Michel, the EU will continue to call for full accountability for these crimes, including the crime of aggression, and will not recognise any illegal attempt to change the status of Ukraine’s territories, including the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol.

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