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The European Union opened accession talks with Ukraine and Moldova on June 15 after the election of a new government in Hungary removed the final hurdle to moving the process of joining the 27-member bloc.
What follows may prove just as tough as the countries make the legal and policy changes necessary to become actual EU members.
The EU enlargement process consists of 33 policy chapters -- from foreign policy to agriculture and fisheries -- and the candidate countries must adopt all the EU laws and regulations in each of those chapters.
These chapters are divided into six clusters, and on June 15 Moldova and Ukraine opened up Cluster 1, known as "the fundamentals," which consist of five chapters dealing mainly with rule of law issues. These are always opened first and closed last, meaning a candidate country has fulfilled all of Brussels' conditions. Ukraine and Moldova have to date started talks on five out of the 33 policy chapters.
