Five EU countries propose to limit voting rights for new members of bloc after accession - Reuters

Five influential states of the European Union propose to temporarily limit the voting rights of future new members of the bloc in key strategic issues. The corresponding official document for internal discussion was prepared by Germany, France, the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg. This is reported in an exclusive material of the international agency Reuters.

The authors of the initiative insist on the introduction of additional strict safeguards for countries that will join the EU in the future. In particular, it is proposed to create a new mechanism for permanent monitoring and significantly strengthen control over compliance with democratic standards and the rule of law. The main innovation could be the temporary deprivation of new members of the right to vote in areas where decisions are made only with the unanimous support of all EU countries. This concerns issues of further enlargement of the European Union, the formation of a common foreign policy and the approval of the bloc's general budget.

The need to create such mechanisms arose within the EU after long-term internal crises and regular disputes around Hungary, which European institutions have repeatedly accused of departing from democratic principles and blocking joint decisions. Against this background, a large-scale discussion has unfolded in Brussels on revising internal rules for future waves of enlargement.

This discussion directly affects the interests of Ukraine, Moldova, Albania and Montenegro, which are currently seeking to speed up the negotiation process as much as possible. Just last week, Cyprus, which currently holds the presidency of the Council of the EU, announced the start of preparations for the opening of the first negotiation cluster with Ukraine and Moldova, which concerns precisely the issues of the rule of law. At the same time, some of Kyiv's partners insist on the invariability of the European integration course. In particular, Estonian Prime Minister Kristen Michal emphasized during a meeting with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Tallinn that Ukraine should be in the EU, and all six negotiation clusters should be opened without any delay.

As Ukrainian News Agency earlier reported, in late May, the Financial Times wrote, citing its own sources, that President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's insistence on Ukraine's immediate accession to the European Union had led to an aggravation of tensions in relations with European leaders.

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