Hungary is not blocking Ukraine's EU accession talks, Kyiv's ambassador insists

And now to a very special candidate country, Ukraine. Kiev hopes to open its two remaining EU negotiating clusters before the end of the year, despite delays in Budapest. In an exclusive interview with Euronews ahead of the European Commission's latest enlargement report, Ukraine's ambassador to the EU, Taras Kachka, said there were no substantive disagreements with Hungary holding up the process. He also defended Kiev's progress on reforms, despite concerns over delays in adopting key legislation. For more on this, our Ukraine correspondent, Sasha Vakulina, joins me now in the studio. Good morning, Sasha. Good morning. So, the European Commission is about to release its latest enlargement assessment. How does Ukraine see its progress towards EU membership, and what challenges does Kyiv also see? Kyiv does see challenges, but what is important, and this is something that Taraskachka told me, is for Ukraine to get the... And to get the timeline not postponed, but rather fast-tracked. This was, of course, an exclusive interview, the first one since Taraskachka took over the new position as the head of the mission of Ukraine to the European Union. So it was really interesting to see his perspective. Also, of course, given Ukraine's unique case. Now, we are talking about the country almost five years into defending itself against Russia's brutal full-scale invasion, implementing those reforms and pushing to open those clusters. During the all-out war, and at the same time, when you look at all the candidates' stuff, and of course, Ukraine, regarding its size and importance, this is a different case, which will be much harder for the European Union to accept and to digest. Let's take a listen to what he said. The report should highlight how fast we can move on closing the chapters, but also indicating what are the maybe some challenges. We do not see challenges in domestic politics in terms of applying a key. We might see challenges that are stemming from security situation, Russian aggression, and the fact that Ukraine is really one of the biggest candidate status among forefront runners, definitely the biggest one. And so, therefore, there might be more complex negotiations, but it is not a problem. You mentioned the challenge. Some of those are in regards to Ukraine's reform commitment. Some important reforms have faced delays in the parliament in Kyiv. What is holding up this? The government and parliament is getting stronger in the recent weeks, so therefore the tempo will be only faster. At least I expect this and there are chances for this. So therefore I think that Ukraine definitely is delivering, is getting to deliver faster and better. I hope that the enlargement package report will confirm that this general assessment of Ukraine being able to adopt everything by the end of 2027 and therefore be advanced in 2027 with closing chapters will be confirmed. I've got to mention the amended minority education legislation, which was, of course, crucial as it cleared the way for two more negociating clusters to open. And yet Hungary now blocked the progress on the two remaining clusters. What does Budapest want now? I think that this word block misleads us. Yes. Indeed, Hungary requests an additional time for consideration, for brainstorming on certain decisions. For the second and third clusters we adopted what we agreed previously so that and it was something that was elaborated during previous several years therefore it was well known for Ukrainian society for Ukrainian MPs and it was rather additional boost for decision making in Hungary so now we see that we have a full mutual understanding of Hungary so therefore it is a It is a matter of time and planning how. We open remaining two clusters before the end of this year. You say Hungary and the government in Budapest is taking its time a little bit. Does it still have to do with the minority education rights? Or there is another reason? It's a matter of processing. On the same issue, on the minority rights? No, no, generally. So that for the clusters, clusters four and five, for the policies that are covered. So this is a different issue, not the one that has already been sorted. This is what I'm trying to understand. There are no issues. There is a processing of all these documents. So that there are no substantive ...requirements, disagreements or concerns, so this is rather a matter of... How the documents are processed, assessed, read, because there are like several hundreds of pages of documents in this, let's say, support in the opening of this cluster. Right. And on the minority education legislation, all adopted, all agreed, has it been implemented in Ukraine? Yes, they work. These rules are work. So they're all in place. Some of them are, let's say, have been de facto operational even before. So now they properly work for everyone, for every... When we spoke last time, I asked you about the possibility of Ukraine getting the idea floated by some member states about the associate membership and somehow half steps towards that. Does that change the take for Kyiv, knowing that there is another country that might get... Different type of associate membership, half-stepping into the European Union. The case of Canada illustrates that associate membership is a term that is rather better suits the partnerships with friends who are friends but rather distant and will not join the European Union. I hope that we will still have four frontrunners. Thank Ukraine, Moldova, Montenegro and Albania. And it means that EU sees us as a frontrunner. So that's why we don't need to shift to any alternatives. you Thank you. very much.