Scholz fears Ukraine joining EU will shift power away from Berlin and Paris

Chancellor lobbying for changes to voting rules as wider membership may tip balance towards the east

GERMANY has privately called for the European Union’s governing treaties to be overhauled amid fears that Ukraine’s pending membership could shift the power balance away from Berlin, The Sunday Telegraph can reveal.

A senior diplomatic source said Olaf Scholz, Germany’s chancellor, raised the issue at a recent meeting with EU counterparts in Brussels and called for treaty change before Kyiv is allowed to officially join.

Despite outward celebration of Ukraine’s membership bid, concerns are being expressed in private. If Ukraine becomes a fully fledged member, it would be the bloc’s fifth-largest member but also its poorest, according to analysis by the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP).

Under the bloc’s current voting system, which takes into account the number of members voting and their population, Kyiv would have 9 per cent of the EU’s total power.

Combining this power with Poland, Kyiv’s neighbour and close ally, would make them more powerful than Germany, the EU’s largest and richest state. A central and eastern European bloc could also outvote the traditional Franco-German powerbase if allied with other smaller members such as the Nordic states.

“This would shift the balance of power within the EU further away from Germany and France more towards central and eastern Europe, where the countries, together with the Nordics, for the first time would be a more sizeable bloc in terms of voting power,” Dr Nicolai von Ondarza, of the SWP, said.

Mr Scholz wants the voting system to be reconfigured to ensure power blocs of EU nations cannot be formed in order to secure extra funding from their rich allies. The German leader, who has been repeatedly criticised over his hesitancy in supporting Ukraine in its war against Russia, wants the principle of national vetoes to be scrapped.

Emmanuel Macron, France’s president, has also spoken of the need to change the voting system to stop his country’s ambitions from being thwarted by smaller EU members.

Ukraine applied for, and was granted, candidate status to join the EU in record time in response to the Russian invasion on Feb 24. The process is expected to take decades as Kyiv carries out judicial, economic, democratic and anti-corruption reforms to meet the bloc’s rules and values.

Volodymyr Zelensky, its president, wants to move faster, however. “Our path to membership should not take years or decades,” he said this week.

“We have to overcome this path quickly.”

His comments will heap pressure on EU leaders to move far more quickly than they are used to doing when it comes to the bloc’s enlargement debate.

Yet, although Ukraine’s membership bid was endorsed by all 27 EU member states, Germany is not the only one raising concerns.

Sources told The Telegraph that Portugal questioned whether Ukraine should be welcomed into the bloc, given the current state of its economy.

According to pre-war calculations, Ukraine’s economy would be the worst within the EU if it were to join.

This would force Portugal, for the first time, to become a net contributor to the bloc’s budget, meaning it would pay in more than it receives. The Czech Republic would be consigned to the same fate.

In the weeks building up to the EU’s decision to welcome Ukraine as a candidate, Kyiv poured hundreds of hours into diplomatic talks to reassure the bloc’s member states that it would not abuse its voting powers.

France and Germany’s concerns were well-noted by Ukraine’s top diplomats when these negotiations started.

“They’re trying to think creatively [about] how decision-making processes can be streamlined,” a top Ukrainian diplomat said.

“Not to neutralise Ukraine, but to avoid possible complications.”

The Ukrainian source insisted Kyiv would not deliberately try to create a new power bloc within the EU to shift the balance towards eastern and central Europe.

“The fair point is we need to prepare our institutions and political class to produce officials to work here on an adequate level,” they added.

“This is a very important issue when Ukraine reaches this point to contribute and not complicate.”

‘This would shift the balance of power ... central and eastern Europe, together with the Nordics, would be the more sizeable voting bloc’