The European Commission has said Montenegro is in the final phase of its bid to join the European Union, with the Balkan country on course to become the bloc’s 28th member state in 2028.
In its annual enlargement package, presented today, the Commission said Podgorica had provisionally closed 21 of its 33 negotiating chapters. It said it expected talks to conclude before the end of the year, with the accession treaty signed in 2027 and ratified in time for membership the following year.
Presenting the package to the European Parliament’s Committee on Foreign Affairs, Enlargement Commissioner Marta Kos said Montenegro was in the last 100 metres of the process. She added that the country was expected to join in 2028.
The Irish presidency of the Council of the European Union announced that member states had agreed to close the chapter on free movement of goods. The decision would be formalised at an intergovernmental conference in Brussels on November 6, leaving 11 chapters outstanding.
Signing the treaty would not guarantee entry, though. It would still require the consent of the European Parliament and ratification by all 27 member states, any one of which could halt the process.
Croatia has made clear it is prepared to use that leverage. Zagreb has circulated eight conditions to EU capitals, several of them linked to war crimes and property disputes dating back to the break-up of Yugoslavia in the 1990s.
In October, Croatia secured the removal of deadlines for closing Montenegro’s chapters from European Council conclusions, according to Croatian public broadcaster HRT. It has also blocked the chapter on foreign, security and defence policy since December 2024.
A single veto can last years. Hungary held up Ukraine’s accession talks for two years until Prime Minister Péter Magyar dropped the block imposed by his predecessor Viktor Orbán in June.
The price of admission has also drawn scrutiny. In June, the Commission proposed a seven-year financial package for Montenegro, a country of about 620,000 people, reported to be worth around €3.2 billion, while insisting the bill for existing members would amount to little more than a coffee per citizen.
At home, enthusiasm has cooled. Support for membership fell to 71 per cent in September 2025, seven points lower than a year earlier, according to polling cited by Poland’s Centre for Eastern Studies (OSW).
Montenegro opened accession talks in June 2012 and remains the most advanced candidate, ahead of Albania, Ukraine and Moldova. No country has joined the EU since Croatia in 2013.
