It is a great pleasure and an honour to be received by you [Denys Shmyhal, Prime Minister of Ukraine] and your team during my last visit to Ukraine as High Representative – I hope it will not be my last one personally. But I wanted to come in order to take stock of our relations and the military situation.
I have to congratulate Ukraine for the positive assessment in the enlargement report that we approved at the European Commission a couple of weeks ago.
You are progressing across the board, in spite of these exceptional circumstances, [ in spite of] this large-scale war, you are making progress at a speed I have never seen in any other [candidate] country on the accession process.
It is a merit-based, it is a long-term process, but you are going very quickly, very well, and I know that you know – [and the] Ukrainian people know – that it is the game changer for the history of Ukraine.
Ukraine has been fighting in order to get independence, and to look for a space in the geopolitical landscape. And the place for you has been decided: it is the European Union.
Link to the video (starting at 1:30): https://audiovisual.ec.europa.eu/en/video/I-263775