Three MEPs tell us how the EPP became Kyiv’s party

Andrius Kubilius, Rasa Juknevicienė, Andrzej Halicki explain how they made the People’s Party the closest European party to Ukrainian demands. And because after the EU it is necessary to insist on entry into NATO

Strasbourg. They used to call us ‘radicals’, but today the European People’s line on Ukraine is “a copy and paste of our tweets in the aftermath of the Russian invasion”. This was told by the Lithuanian MEP Andrius Kubilius, who together with his colleague Rasa Juknevicienė, vice-president of the group, and the Polish Andrzej Halicki lead a vanguard of people’s MEPs from Eastern Europe which in the past year swept away German prudence and Berlusconi’s strangeness from the political line of the EPP and brought it to the forefront of support for Kyiv. After the sanctions, the shipment of arms and the granting of the status of candidate country for EU entry, the eastern fray package, supported by Stoltenberg’s visit to Kyiv yesterday, is ready for a new push to ensure that the party supports the almost immediate entry of Ukraine into NATO.