UKRAINE AND THE REPUBLIC OF MOLDOVA’ ACCESS TO THE EUROPEAN UNION IN THE CURRENT GEOPOLITICAL AND ECONOMIC CONTEXT

The European Union has announced that Ukraine and Moldova have been granted candidate status. This announcement, together with the solidarity shown so far by EU countries, opens new prospects for the economies of the two candidate countries, which hope that the accession process will be speeded up and that they will surpass the countries of the Western Balkans, which have started accession negotiations but have made only modest progress on the way to membership. There is also hope for Georgia, where civil society pressure and large street protests have prompted the pro-Russian oligarchic government to abandon a package of Kremlin-inspired laws that is accelerating Russia's transformation from an autocratic regime to an increasingly harsh dictatorship.