This week, our Beyond the Byline podcast focuses on EU membership candidates, progress made, and the silence from the EU’s side. We looked at the instrument for pre-accession assistance and why there is a special process to join the bloc for the Western Balkans. To hear more on this, I talk to EURACTIV’s reporter Vlagyiszlav Makszimov.

We are also talking about how and if diplomacy can be the solution to the war in Ukraine. Diplomats from Ukraine and Russia met in Istanbul for another round of negotiations without a critical outcome. To see how Russia and Ukraine can find compromise via diplomacy, I talked with EURACTIV’s senior editor Georgi Gotev.