The European Union enlargement process should be accelerated, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said in her State of the Union address at a plenary session of the European Parliament in Strasbourg on Wednesday, her last address before next year's European elections.

“The future of Ukraine is in our Union. The future of the Western Balkans is in our Union. The future of Moldova is in our Union. And I know just how important the EU perspective is for so many people in Georgia,” von der Leyen said.

The Commission president said that the bloc of 27 nations needed reforming, and supported amending the Treaty of the European Union if and where necessary.

“But we cannot — and we should not — wait for treaty change to move ahead with enlargement. A union fit for enlargement can be achieved faster,” she said, adding that the precondition for this is to see how a union of more than 30 countries would work in practice.

Serbia and Montenegro are conducting EU accession talks, albeit rather slowly, and North Macedonia and Albania formally opened them only in 2022. Ukraine, Moldova and Bosnia and Herzegovina were granted membership candidate status last year, and Kosovo has the status of a potential candidate.