The accession of Ukraine could break up the European Union

A test case for Switzerland?

by Prof. Dr. Eberhard Hamer*

(7 November 2025) (CH-S) Professor Hamer takes a closer look at the financial consequences of Ukraine’s accession to the European Union. Since the European Union summit in Copenhagen at the beginning of October, his fears are threatening to become reality.

Under pressure from the German, French and British governments, as well as from the European Commission under von der Leyen and Kallas, accession and thus even greater financial and military support for Ukraine by the European Union is becoming increasingly likely. But resistance within the European Union is also growing: some Central European governments are no longer willing to support Brussels’ high-handed and aggressive course at the expense of their own populations.

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Before the end of 2023, the EU had promised Ukraine accession talks – a decision that was probably made more on gut feeling and Atlantic pressure than on sober consideration. Since June 2024, the accession talks have been decided.

Some of the member states that agreed to the accession talks did so behind closed doors because it was “politically expedient”. The others would bitterly regret Ukraine’s actual accession because of the major disadvantages it would entail for them. Most of the countries that agreed to the talks have apparently relied on the fact that actual accession will take at least another 10 years and could be broken off at any time during the accession talks.

In this respect, the decision to start accession talks could be more of a non-binding political demonstration than an actual change in Europe.

However, the accession talks with Turkey – which no one wants to join the EU anymore, not even Turkey itself – have shown that this can nevertheless have consequences. For decades, Turkey has been “prepared for EU membership” with 10 billion euros in bribes. When travelling through Turkey and seeing the excellent motorways and roads, among other things, it is clear where the EU billions have gone. That is why Turkey is not breaking off the talks (even though it no longer wants to join the EU), because as a candidate country it wants to continue receiving billions of euros. The situation will be similar with Ukraine.

Under American pressure, the EU Politburo has “taken on more and more responsibility for Ukraine”, has become the largest contributor to the Ukraine war and Ukraine’s public finances in recent years, has encouraged member states to provide ever greater war efforts, and has even promised Ukraine 720 billion euros for post-war reconstruction. A further 50 billion euros in war cost support was temporarily blocked by Orban but has been unlawfully released by the G7 countries.

Now that the Americans have lost interest in the war in Ukraine (because NATO could not win the war), the US President wants “Europe to take on more responsibility”, i.e. to continue the war and cover not only the war costs but also the government expense of bankrupt Ukraine.

However, admitting Ukraine would break the EU, because:

1. Ukraine is bankrupt, has more than 1 trillion in debt (more than 100 billion dollars for US war supplies alone), has lost its industrial area with Donetsk and Donbass, and as an agricultural country will never be able to pay off its debts on its own, meaning it would remain a permanent boarder of the EU.

American big capital – especially Soros – already bought up $600 billions of Ukrainian debt at a bargain price of around 20% in 2014 and earned this price back in just a few years through interest alone. They are now preventing a devaluation of Ukraine’s debt and expect full repayment through EU aid.

Germany alone, as the largest donor of war material and state aid, has selflessly financed Ukraine with 93 billion euros and even taken over the payment of pensions for five years at 5 billion euros annually because Ukraine is insolvent. Ukraine cannot survive on agricultural exports alone.

It will therefore either have to declare national bankruptcy and experience impoverishment or be fully subsidised by the EU. This would amount to around £50 billion in annual financial aid for the EU, which Selenskyj has already demanded as future permanent payments from the EU, which the other EU member states are unlikely to agree to at their own expense.

2. Ukraine had already been bought up by Anglo-Saxon big capital before the war. More than half of the black soil belongs to BlackRock, Vanguard and other US corporations. Industry also belongs to Anglo-Saxon big capital. Ukraine was therefore already sold out before the war and is now so weakened economically by the destruction of war that it would be a long-term subsidy drain for the EU if it accepted this country as a member, which it is not allowed to do under its statutes.

3. Ukraine has also been bled dry. Of its more than 40 million inhabitants, less than 20 million remain due to the loss of the Donbass regions and flight abroad. If Ukraine were to have open borders with the EU upon accession, millions more skilled workers would leave the devastated country because they would have better chances of survival elsewhere. The remaining population will therefore remain a poorhouse of Europe in the long term, unable to achieve the average standard of living required for accession.

4. For the time being, however, Ukraine does not meet European legal standards. It is the most corrupt country in Europe, controlled by a gang of oligarchs led by the oligarch Zelensky. This gang has secured economic, social and political leadership positions as trustees of Anglo-Saxon big capital, shamelessly helping themselves to local resources, especially the war funds that have been flowing freely for two years.

Selenskyj alone has accumulated villas and latifundia in Israel, Cyprus, Italy and the USA, as well as millions in the tax haven of the Virgin Islands. Bribery is so common and so widespread that, according to the CIA, 50% of the weapons supplied by the West are now turning up all over the world, having been resold by the oligarchs. The extent of corruption throughout Ukrainian society, and especially among its economic and political elite, is likely to rule out EU membership in the long term.

5. The subsidy interests of many European member states would also stand in the way of Ukraine’s accession. If Ukraine were an EU member, it would be able to claim more than a quarter of all agricultural subsidies, which would cause hundreds of thousands of farmers in the other member states to face existential difficulties. And the agricultural businesses in Ukraine owned by American corporations produce genetically modified products that could not be converted in the medium term but are not permitted in the EU.

Like the GDR in 1989, Ukraine has also lost its Russian market for industrial goods because of the war and will not be able to regain an equivalent replacement in the West for the time being, if only for reasons of quality. The EU would therefore also have to provide massive support for industrial development to make the country ready for membership again, but the EU does not have the money for this because it is facing increasing financial difficulties itself.

Ukraine’s hopes of joining the EU are therefore only long-term hopes that cannot be fulfilled in the short to medium term. If, despite these reasons for exclusion, the EU Presidency were to use tricks to achieve Ukraine’s accession, Ukraine’s financial needs and its military risk on the border with Russia could blow the EU apart. Why should the Mediterranean countries, which are themselves heavily indebted, accept another bankrupt country that demands high subsidies, for which they would have to pay permanently, and which would also drive them into enmity with Russia, Europe’s largest source of raw materials?

An EU that has now indebted itself to the tune of over €2.5 trillion without having any revenue of its own (only contributions from member states) and then wants to take in the largest bankrupt country in Europe is overestimating its economic capabilities and will fail financially.

Talks on Ukraine’s accession are therefore likely to proceed in the same way as those with Turkey: the longer they go on, the more problems will arise, and the more it will become apparent that the EU is destroying itself by accepting more members and harming its member states more than their populations are prepared to tolerate.

If Ukraine were to be accepted, its existential crisis would also lead to an existential crisis for the EU.

There is already growing resistance in the member states to the EU’s policy of becoming a sovereign central state above the member states and reducing their sovereignty to provincial status. The growing national resistance in the member states and the political shift to the right are directed primarily against the “EU dictatorship”.

However, the EU’s mismanagement and debt explosion since von der Leyen could surpass the issue of Ukraine’s membership if the EU itself collapses.

* Eberhard Hamer (born 1932) is a German economist. After studying economics, theology and law, Hamer completed his doctorate. He then worked as a corporate lawyer. He was then appointed to the University of Applied Sciences in Bielefeld, where he taught as a professor of economic and financial policy until his retirement in 1994. In the 1970s, he founded the privately run Mittelstandsinstitut Niedersachsen in Hanover and published numerous essays and over 20 books on the subject of SMEs.

Source: https://www.goldseiten.de/artikel/669591--Die-Aufnahme-der-Ukraine-koennte-die-EU-sprengen.html, 7  September 2025, © Prof. Dr. Eberhard Hamer, Mittelstandsinstitut Niedersachsen e.V

(Translation “Swiss Standpoint”)