Ukraine has the best case for speed and the worst conditions for it. A new reading of the numbers shows where the gap is.
This week EU ambassadors cleared the way for opening two more clusters of accession talks with Ukraine and Moldova, on the single market and competitiveness. Hungary, which has blocked the move since the summer, signalled it would drop its opposition if Ukraine's parliament passes a law on education rights for the Hungarian minority. The Rada is due to vote on Monday. Diplomats hope to open the clusters on the sidelines of an EU ministers' meeting in Luxembourg on Tuesday.
Before that happens, here is what the best available measure says about where Ukraine stands.
EPIC's Integration Readiness Index (IRI), published in June 2026 as a study paper with the Friedrich Naumann Foundation by Antonios Nestoras, Emil Kirjas and Bernada Cunj, scores ten candidate countries from 0 to 10. It relies only on the European Commission's annual progress reports. It rates each country on five things: state of play, annual progress, recommendation delivery, chapter status and accession momentum. The benchmark is Croatia in 2011, the last country to complete accession, which scored between 8.8 and 9.2.
EPIC is explicit about what the score is not. In the Ukraine chapter, the authors write: "Scores reflect Commission-assessed readiness and momentum, not political desirability, wartime solidarity considerations, or forward-looking pledges."
Ukraine scored 4.61 in 2023, 5.47 in 2024 and 5.85 in 2025. The first jump was procedural. Negotiations opened in 2024, the first intergovernmental conference was held and screening began. The index's chapter-status score rose from 2.0 to 4.5 and its momentum score from 6.0 to 8.0, even though the underlying readiness numbers moved only modestly.
The second step was substance. In the 2025 report, state of play rose from 5.3 to 5.7, annual progress from 5.6 to 5.8 and recommendation delivery from 5.5 to 5.9. The chapter-status score reached 6.0. Momentum, though, fell from 8.0 to 7.0. EPIC's reading is that bilateral screening was completed and the reports moved on to the Council, which kept momentum high, but with no chapters opened or closed the process could not score higher.
That is the gap the Hungarian veto has opened. Ukraine is doing more of the work and getting less credit for it, because the process itself has been frozen.
At 5.85, Ukraine sits just behind Moldova (5.87) and ahead of Serbia and North Macedonia (both 5.5). The front-runners are Montenegro (6.8) and Albania (6.7). All of them remain far from Croatia's band. EPIC calls Ukraine's position "intermediate", with credible forward movement but dependent on consistent delivery on rule of law and anti-corruption.
The Commission, in the reports behind the index, flags exactly those two areas: anti-corruption safeguards and prosecutorial independence. They are the concerns that hold the upward trend back.
The numbers suggest Ukraine's problem is no longer mainly that it is not ready. It is that the process does not move at the pace the reforms do, and that the one thing a veto can freeze is the thing the index rewards most. If the clusters open next week, momentum should recover in the next Commission assessment, due at the end of October. If they do not, Ukraine's score will rise more slowly than its reforms, which is a political choice, not an indicator of readiness.
The figures here are EPIC's 2025 index, built on the 2025 Commission reports. They will be updated when the next progress reports arrive.
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