Shared fishing rights in the EU has traditionally been a deal breaker for both Iceland and Greenland to join.
"They're stealing our fish!" gets voters riled up, even in countries where the fishing industry is economically insignificant and/or unprofitable.
Well-off European states with lots of sea (Norway, Iceland, Greenland, the UK) are disproportionately likely to reject EU membership due to the Common Fisheries Policy.
It's too bad that the EU failed to recognise, way back in the EEC days, that having all these countries in the EU was far more important than some fish. (And just wait to see what a huge problem the Common Agricultural Policy is going to be for Ukrainian membership.)
Personally, I'd like to see Ukraine in the EU asap, but I'd also like the EU reformed into a democratic federation, such that the equivalent of the FBI has meaningful authority to investigate and prosecute corruption and rule of law irregularities in member states like Ukraine and Bulgaria.
Integration would be difficult on the agricultural front, but is something that the EU has been dealing with since inception.
One of the "benefits" of the war and the Ukrainian diaspora throughout Europe is that they will be able to integrate much faster than the previous Balkan and Balkan-adjaent countries as integration into Schengen would be able to be rapid.
Ukraine's engineering, mining, and agricultural industries would bring major advantages to the EU as a Union, diversifying engineering from dependence on Germany, and bringing broadscale agricultural efficiencies to the EU as well.
If there is one thing that Western EU countries have learned over the last 30 years, is that borders should be opened very slowly. With the current "black wave" sweeping the continent, there is no chance in hell that Ukraine will be admitted to Schengen in less than 10-15 years - if at all.
I'm not trying to rain on your parade, I'm just being realistic. Ukraine has all the problems of countries that were admitted to the EU too quickly, plus all the problems coming from scale and an agrarian economy. Just waving it in the EU would be a repetition of all the major missteps of the last 30 years.
The main concerns about new states joining Schengen are usually that (a) there may be too many immigrants from the new member to the old members, and (b) that the external Schengen boundaries will be insufficiently protected by the new member state.
Neither problem applies to Ukraine - Ukrainians have had essentially free migration access to the Schengen since 2022, and Ukraine's borders with third-party states would be - by far - the best defended. Ukraine could join Schengen very easily (unlike the EU itself, which may indeed take years). I wouldn't be surprised if Ukraine becomes part of Schengen well before it joins the EU, á la Iceland.
They'll have all sorts of issues, but has there ever been a nation that has been so unanimous about wanting to join?
I think NATO membership is more likely to occur before EU membership, Ukraine won't accept anything less for their future protection, having fought the Russians to a standstill.
EU integration is more about the economics first. For example, Ukraine just cut off traffic of Russian oil/gas across its territory. That was a source of income for Ukraine that will have to be compensated after the war. Perhaps via damages paid by seized Russian assets.
What I hope that both of these perhaps decade long paths start in 2025.
It would make a good celebration in 2035 if both of those things have happened.
French fishers don’t want to make the investments into their fleet, so they harassed French politicians until those spiked the pulse fishing research permits. This had the by-effect of (nearly) bankrupting the Dutch fishing fleet.
So no, fishing industry fights are not just an UK thing.