50 years of EU expansion: who’s in and who wants to join?

PARIS – The European Union, which holds a summit with war-battered membership candidate Ukraine in Kyiv on Friday, has gone through several waves of expansion in the past 50 years.

Four months after Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine last year, the 27-nation bloc accepted Ukraine, along with its neighbour Moldova, as candidates in June 2022.

The decision is the first step on the way to membership negotiations, which usually last years.

But Ukraine is impatient. Ahead of the summit Prime Minister Denys Shmygal said that by staging the top-level meeting in Ukraine, Europe shows it “supports our rapid movement towards EU membership”.