European leaders will meet in Luxemburg to consider Ukraine’s bid to join the EU

VPM | By David Folkenflik and Dave Mistich

Published June 14, 2026 at 12:15 PM EDT

DAVID FOLKENFLIK, HOST:

In February of 2022, just four days after Russia invaded Ukraine, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy applied for his country to join the European Union. He sought closer political and economic ties with the rest of Europe, even as he sought to shore up military support. Now, more than four years into the war, Zelenskyy is still on that quest. And tomorrow, leaders from the EU are gathering in Luxembourg, where they’ll take the first formal step in considering Ukraine’s bid. Engjellushe Morina is a senior fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, and she joins us now from Berlin. Welcome to the program.

ENGJELLUSHE MORINA: Thank you for having me on your program, David.

FOLKENFLIK: What exactly will this meeting entail?

MORINA: So if I could go back just a little bit, we had Viktor Orban as the prime minister of Hungary. And because everything in European Union is decided by unanimity, Viktor Orban had decided to put a veto on Ukraine’s accession bid. So in April, Viktor Orban lost, and the new prime minister, Magyar, has a different attitude towards Ukraine’s accession. So the veto is now lifted, and then the next step would be opening the negotiating chapters for Ukraine. The negotiations usually last for a few years. The important thing is the fundamentals is being opened, and then other clusters are supposed to be open in July.

FOLKENFLIK: With all that President Zelenskyy has on his plate, why does this matter to him and to Ukraine – this question of membership in the European Union?

MORINA: I think it matters a lot for Ukrainians, especially since February 2022. EU membership means also a sort of a security guarantee. It’s not NATO membership, of course. But still, there are many perks that will be offered to Ukraine if it becomes an EU member state that would also mean security for Ukraine. And for a country that is currently at war, this means a lot when it comes to the reconstruction of Ukraine, to stability of economy, but also to stability of the – all returnees that have left Ukraine in the past four years.

FOLKENFLIK: What’s the incentive for the European Union to take this on? Obviously, Ukraine’s been, you know, torn up by war, and it is in a weakened economic state. What’s the appeal to the European Union to even consider this?

MORINA: First of all, I think for Europe, it means consolidation of its neighborhood. So this is eastern neighborhood to the EU countries. European single market will be much larger. Ukraine has around 38 million inhabitants. So it’s economic benefits, security benefits for EU. And also, European project will be consolidated and will be bigger, which means quite a lot for competitiveness.

FOLKENFLIK: What sort of response might Europe and the rest of the world expect from Russia?

MORINA: If I could go back to the end of last year when we started hearing that the peace negotiations between U.S., Russia and Ukraine are advancing, and one of the points in the peace negotiations was Ukraine becoming a member of European Union by 2027, this means that Russians might have nodded OK to this, but not a membership in NATO for Ukraine. And so in this case, I would say the response would be probably not so drastic.

I mean, they already responded quite drastically in 2014, when Ukrainians signed the association agreement. And that’s when the Crimea happened, and that’s when Donbas and Mariupol ended up in a conflict zone. But now I think Russians are probably seeing this as something that they would give in, but I wouldn’t imagine they would be willing to talk about NATO membership for Ukraine. I think the war, in many ways, was a reaction – Russia’s response to having already lost the power over Ukraine and the competition, in a way, to the accession process, because Ukrainians were very adamant that they wanted EU membership eventually.

FOLKENFLIK: We’ve been speaking with Engjellushe Morina. She’s a senior fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations. Thanks so much for taking the time to talk with us.

MORINA: Thank you for inviting me. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

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David Folkenflik

David Folkenflik was described by Geraldo Rivera of Fox News as "a really weak-kneed, backstabbing, sweaty-palmed reporter." Others have been kinder. The Columbia Journalism Review, for example, once gave him a "laurel" for reporting that immediately led the U.S. military to institute safety measures for journalists in Baghdad.

Based in New York City, Folkenflik serves as NPR's media correspondent.

His stories and analyses are broadcast on the network's newsmagazines, such as All Things Considered, Morning Edition, and Here & Now, and are featured on NPR's website and mobile platforms. Folkenflik's reports cast light on the stories of our age, the figures who shape journalism, and the tectonic shifts affecting the news industry. Folkenflik has reported intently on the relationship between the press, politicians, and the general public, as well as the fight over the flow of information in the age of Trump. Folkenflik brought listeners the profile of a Las Vegas columnist who went bankrupt fending off a libel lawsuit from his newspaper's new owner; conducted the first interview with New York Times executive editor Dean Baquet after his appointment; and repeatedly broke news involving the troubled Tronc company, which owns some of the most important regional newspapers in the country. In early 2018, Folkenflik's exposé about the past workplace behavior of the CEO of the Los Angeles Times forced the executive's immediate ouster from that job and helped inspire the sale of the newspaper.

Folkenflik is the author of Murdoch's World: The Last of the Old Media Empires. The Los Angeles Times called Murdoch's World "meaty reading... laced with delicious anecdotes" and the Huffington Post described it as "the gift that keeps on giving." Folkenflik is also editor of Page One: Inside the New York Times and the Future of Journalism. His work has appeared in such publications as the Washington Post, Politico Magazine, Newsweek International, the National Post of Canada, and the Australian Financial Review. Business Insider has called Folkenflik one of the 50 most influential people in American media.

Folkenflik joined NPR in 2004 after more than a decade at the Baltimore Sun, where he covered higher education, national politics, and the media. He started his professional career at the Durham Herald-Sun in North Carolina. Folkenflik served as editor-in-chief at the Cornell Daily Sun and graduated from Cornell with a bachelor's degree in history.

A five-time winner of the Arthur Rowse Award for Press Criticism from the National Press Club, Folkenflik has received numerous other recognitions, including the inaugural 2002 Mongerson Award for Investigative Reporting on the News and top honors from the National Headliners. In 2018, the Society of Professional Journalists recognized Folkenflik with its 2018 Ethics in Journalism Award. In 2017, Penn State University named Folkenflik as the nation's leading media critic with the Bart Richards Award. He also served as the inaugural Irik Sevin Fellow at Cornell. Folkenflik frequently lectures at college campuses and civic organizations across the country and often appears as a media analyst for television and radio programs in the U.S., the U.K., Canada, Australia, and Ireland.

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