The European Union has set the stage for decoupling Moldova's accession process from Ukraine's after both candidates overcame Hungary's two-year veto and opened the fist cluster of negotiations.
The two countries have been informally paired since the early days of Russia's war of Ukraine, which prompted the back-to-back membership applications.
Since then, the question on when Chișinău should part ways from Kyiv has been looming over the conversation. But the optics of leaving a country at war behind on the waiting list proved problematic and the duo remained united in practice.
On Tuesday, at the end of an EU-Moldova summit in Brussels, the bloc's leadership suggested decoupling might soon be inevitable.
"Once the first cluster is open, every candidate country is responsible for itself, because they have to deliver different reforms, depending on what candidate country we're talking about," Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, said.
