János Bóka, the minister in charge of EU affairs, said a decision on Ukraine's European Union accession must not be postponed to a later date.
Minister Bóka said on Facebook that accession talks had started with Ukraine in a record short time, less than two and a half years after submitting the application.
"It seems indeed the plan is to make Ukraine an EU member by 2030, as promised by the European Commission," Minister Bóka said. He added that this actually meant sacrificing the merit-based enlargement process for political purposes.
The application for membership was submitted by Ukraine on February 28, 2022, and within an unprecedentedly short time the country was given candidate status on June 23, 2022, despite the EC having established that Ukraine had only fulfilled two of seven criteria for candidacy, he said.
Minister Bóka said that better-prepared countries such as Sweden and Finland had had to wait for a longer period of time after submitting their application, adding that the EU started formal accession talks with Ukraine on June 25, 2024.
"If we lean back and say that it's too early to make a decision, the accession process will rush past us. We must express an opinion about Ukraine's EU accession now because next year it will be too late," he said.