Source: European Parliament
Accession to the European Union is a long process, requiring not only legislative, administrative and economic adaptation to EU standards, but also a degree of adaptation to the working methods of the EU institutions. One of these new working methods candidate countries must navigate is how the European Parliament organises its activities, how members interact, and how to build alliances and dialogue among the various political families represented in Parliament. Parliament’s rules of procedure allow parliamentary representatives of candidate countries to experience all these aspects in person, in advance of accession. Once the accession procedure is nearing conclusion, i.e. once an accession treaty is signed, the parliament of the acceding country may be invited to appoint, from among its members, persons who will be granted observer status to the European Parliament. As they are not yet elected in European elections, these observers remain members of the acceding country’s parliament, but have the opportunity to participate, with some limitations, in parliamentary activities. For example, they cannot vote or fill any elected position within Parliament’s organisation. However, they can participate in the activities of the parliamentary group to which they are affiliated, and attend plenary sittings and committee meetings. Observers were appointed in the last three EU enlargements, and remained in office either until ad hoc European Elections were organised for the acceding country, i.e. outside the official electoral cycle (Croatia, Romania and Bulgaria), or until the end of the parliamentary term (2004 enlargement). The possibility for Ukraine to have observer members in the European Parliament, under the current rules, depends upon the progress on accession negotiations, which officially only opened in December 2023. Nevertheless, cooperation between the Verkhovna Rada, the Ukrainian parliament, and the European Parliament already takes place in other forms.