© Wayne Lawrence for The New York Times
© Karsten Moran for The New York Times
The European Union could open two additional negotiating clusters with Ukraine and Moldova next week if the Ukrainian parliament passes legislation intended to address concerns over education rights for national minorities.
EU Enlargement Commissioner Marta Kos confirmed the possible timetable on Monday following a meeting of the EU-Moldova Association Council in Brussels.
Asked whether further intergovernmental conferences could take place this month, Kos said the next two clusters could potentially be opened during meetings in Luxembourg next week.
The condition is passage by the Verkhovna Rada of legislation dealing with educational rights for national minorities, an issue that has been central to Hungary’s objections to further progress in Ukraine’s accession negotiations.
Kos said during the Commission’s recorded press conference that Brussels was aware of the Ukrainian parliament’s procedures and hoped the legislation would be approved. Member states would then have to complete their own procedures quickly.
A draft law covering education rights for indigenous peoples and national minorities was registered in the Verkhovna Rada on 1 October.
The legislation is intended in part to address Hungarian demands concerning the use of minority languages in Ukrainian schools, particularly by the ethnic Hungarian community in Zakarpattia.
Hungary has repeatedly linked support for Ukraine’s EU accession process to those issues.
Ukraine and Moldova formally opened accession negotiations in 2024 and have since moved into the detailed cluster-based process used to organise negotiations over the EU acquis.
EU Today reported in June that the two countries had moved into the first substantive stage after political agreement allowed negotiations on the “fundamentals” cluster to proceed.
That cluster covers areas including the judiciary, fundamental rights, public administration, democratic institutions, public procurement and financial control.
Unlike most negotiating areas, the fundamentals cluster remains open throughout the accession process and is normally closed last.
The possible opening of two additional clusters would therefore mark another practical step in a process that remains dependent on unanimous support among EU governments at key stages.
Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha has said he hopes adoption of the minority-education amendments will remove the remaining basis for Hungary to block the next steps.
The negotiations have also become linked increasingly closely to the wider security relationship between the EU and Ukraine.
EU Today has followed the accession process as Kyiv and Chișinău seek to keep negotiations moving despite political resistance within the bloc.
Brussels continues to stress that accession remains merit-based and conditional on reforms.
Kos said on Monday that both Ukraine and Moldova were delivering reforms in difficult circumstances and described them as being among the four front-running candidate states.
The Commission is due to publish its annual enlargement reports on 28 October, providing a detailed assessment of progress across individual negotiating chapters.
Moldova has set itself a target of being ready to complete negotiations by early 2028, although any final accession date would depend on the member states.
The country has also been moving closer to EU structures outside the formal accession negotiations.
Kallas said on Monday that the EU had committed €1.9 billion under its Growth Plan for Moldova and was releasing another €157 million tranche. Moldova has joined the Single Euro Payments Area and is moving towards inclusion in the EU’s mobile roaming area.
Ukraine’s path is more politically complicated because of both the war and recurring disputes with individual EU members.
The next immediate test is parliamentary: whether Kyiv can pass the education amendments quickly enough to allow EU governments to approve the next negotiating stages in Luxembourg.
The event, “Remembrance and Tribute to the Victims of Terrorism”, took place at the Palais des Nations on 1st October. Speakers included Greek MP Georgios Manous, EU Today Publisher and Editor Gary Cartwright, Stéphane Michot of Ideal International, with a contribution from Prof K. Warikoo.
Two interventions focused particularly on Pakistan and the implications for European policy.
Gary Cartwright began with the victims rather than trade or institutional policy.
“Terrorism is not an abstract concept,” he told the meeting, describing a bomb exploding in a market, a child killed outside a school and families waiting for someone who will never return.
He acknowledged that Pakistan itself has suffered heavily from terrorist violence. The 2026 Global Terrorism Index ranked Pakistan as the country most affected by terrorism in 2025, recording 1,139 deaths and 1,045 incidents.
At the same time, Gary raised the record of militant organisations operating from Pakistani territory. The UN Security Council describes Lashkar-e-Tayyiba as a Pakistan-based organisation involved in terrorist activity and records its involvement in the November 2008 Mumbai attacks, in which approximately 164 people were killed and hundreds injured. The same UN entry also records links to the December 2001 attack on the Indian Parliament.
Gary also questioned the safeguards surrounding European education funding in Pakistan.
In December 2024, Dutch MEP Bert-Jan Ruissen asked the European Commission whether EU money intended for education could reach Islamic religious seminaries and what controls were in place over the use of those funds.
In its February 2025 response, the Commission said EU assistance in Sindh and Balochistan was primarily directed through provincial education authorities. It also confirmed that, in selected areas of Balochistan, EU support facilitated formal education for pupils enrolled in religious seminaries through a government-recognised certification programme intended to ease their transition into state education. The Commission said projects were subject to field visits, reporting, monitoring and evaluation.
Gary stressed that he was not arguing that religious education itself constituted extremism. His argument was that European taxpayers should be able to establish where money was going, who administered programmes and what safeguards existed against extremist recruitment.
His intervention then turned to Pakistan’s GSP+ trade status.
Pakistan has benefited from GSP+ since 2014 and is currently the scheme’s largest beneficiary. According to the European Commission’s figures on EU-Pakistan trade, more than 85 per cent of Pakistan’s exports enter the EU duty and quota free. Continued participation requires Pakistan to ratify and effectively implement 27 international conventions covering human and labour rights, environmental protection and good governance.
Gary called for Pakistan’s GSP+ preferences to be suspended pending an assessment of the country’s compliance with its international commitments, counter-terrorism obligations and safeguards surrounding EU-funded programmes.
The issue has been examined previously by EU Today. Its 2025 white paper on Pakistan’s GSP+ compliance argued that the evidential threshold for beginning temporary withdrawal proceedings had been reached, while a Geneva side event in March 2026 considered Pakistan’s human-rights record and the conditionality attached to GSP+ preferences.
Greek MP Georgios Manous approached the subject through terrorism, religious freedom and European security.
He referred to the terrorist attack at Pahalgam in Indian-administered Kashmir on 22 April 2025, in which 25 tourists and one local civilian were killed. EU Today previously examined the attack and its victims in its coverage of the Pahalgam massacre.
In December 2025, India’s National Investigation Agency filed a 1,597-page charge sheet naming Lashkar-e-Tayyiba/The Resistance Front and six other accused. The NIA said its investigation alleged that the attack had been planned, facilitated and executed with direction from Pakistan.
Pakistan rejects Indian allegations of responsibility. Islamabad has said India acted without verifiable evidence and maintains that Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif offered a transparent and independent investigation into the Pahalgam attack.
Manous also addressed Pakistan’s blasphemy legislation and the position of Christians, Hindus and Ahmadis, linking those questions to the broader problem of religious extremism. Concerns over minority rights and blasphemy laws have also featured in EU Today’s continuing coverage of the debate over Pakistan’s GSP+ eligibility.
The Greek MP then turned to Europe, arguing that extremist ideologies and networks should not be viewed solely as a South Asian security problem.
Pakistan, meanwhile, continues to present itself as both a major victim of terrorism and an international counter-terrorism partner. At the fourth US-Pakistan Counterterrorism Dialogue in Washington in August, the two governments reaffirmed cooperation against ISIS-K, al-Qaeda, Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan and the Balochistan Liberation Army, while discussing border security and the disruption of terrorist facilitation networks.
The Geneva discussion therefore centred on two linked questions for European policymakers: how Pakistan’s counter-terrorism record should be assessed, and how that assessment should interact with the conditions attached to EU trade preferences and European-funded programmes.
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