The EU should declare Ukraine a candidate for membership

point of the European Union? In a nutshell, to spread peace and prosperity on the continent. That mission has seen its membership expand steadily from the six founders of its precursor in the 1950s to 27 countries today. But in recent years its growth has slowed. No new member has been admitted since Croatia in 2013 (and one has left). Now war has ignited on the ’s borders—just the sort of horror its founders hoped to banish from the continent. To be true to the ’s mission, to bolster an embattled democracy and to face down the sort of nationalist aggression to which the considers itself the antidote, the club’s leaders, who meet in Brussels next week, should .