EU TRANSFORMATIONS AND THREATS AFFECTING UKRAINE’S EUROPEAN INTEGRATION MECHANISM IN THE CONDITIONS OF WAR

Abstract

The article is devoted to a comprehensive analysis of the transformations of the European Union under the influence of Russia’s war against Ukraine and to an explanation of how migration, economic, energy and related risks change not only the internal architecture of the EU, but also the mechanism of Ukraine’s European integration itself. The relevance of the topic is due to the fact that after 2022, the EU enlargement policy has ceased to be just a technical procedure of legal approximation and is increasingly emerging as an instrument of geopolitical stabilization, security deterrence, economic stability and reconstruction. The article proves that the Russian aggression caused a multidimensional institutional reaction of the EU: strengthening the security and defense component, expanding sanctions and financial policies, forming new instruments of economic security, accelerating energy diversification, and revising migration policy through the application of temporary protection to millions of Ukrainians. On this basis, it is revealed that the mechanism of Ukraine's European integration in the conditions of war is not so much a linear accession process, but a hybrid model that combines classical conditionality, sectoral integration into individual EU policies, reconstruction and financial conditionality, security convergence and intensive institutional adaptation of the Ukrainian state. Methodologically, the study is based on institutional analysis, a comparative political approach, policy analysis and documentary analysis of official materials of the EU, Ukraine and international organizations. The focus is on six related blocks: transformations of EU institutions under the influence of the war; migration challenges and the EU's response; economic threats and sanctions policy; energy security; features of the mechanisms of Ukraine's European integration during the war; recommendations for policy. The scientific novelty of the work lies in the integration of two, often isolated, perspectives - international political and public administration. On the one hand, the article shows how the war contributed to the geopoliticization of the EU and enlargement; on the other - how this geopoliticization requires a new quality of public administration in Ukraine: from interdepartmental coordination of negotiations to audit, anti-corruption mechanisms, staffing, prioritization of the acquis and combining reconstruction with legal adaptation. The practical significance of the article lies in the formation of systemic recommendations for EU institutions and Ukrainian state authorities on accelerating the cluster opening of negotiations, institutionalizing phased integration, mitigating migration and economic fatigue in the EU and increasing Ukraine's administrative capacity for membership.