For the first time in more than a decade the European Union has a chance to accept a new country into the 27-state bloc.
Montenegro, the small Balkan state that faces out on to the Adriatic Sea, expects to complete the technical work on the vast range of internal reforms that are a precondition of membership in a matter of weeks. That would be a serious achievement. Don’t start planning the welcome party just yet though.
The idea of expanding the European club is a politically sensitive subject in several capitals. The French and Dutch governments in particular are hostile to any hint the next enlargement of the bloc is being rushed for geopolitical reasons.
All EU states have to give the thumbs up at every step of the years-long process. When accession negotiations are concluded, a decision to welcome a new country into the fold has to be ratified, in most cases by a vote in each national parliament, though in France it will require a referendum.
The clear front-runner, Montenegro, this week closed two more negotiating “chapters”, meaning the country has ticked off reforms in 18 of the 33 areas on which prospective members are judged.
It’s a huge amount of work that involves a candidate country transposing the large back catalogue of EU laws and rules into domestic legislation and preparing its economy and state institutions to slot into the bloc.
I’ve travelled to most of the Balkan countries in the last three years. The sense is that people willbelieve the EU is serious about taking in new members only when they see it
Montenegro first applied for EU membership in 2008, two years after it became independent from Serbia. Negotiations on its bid began in 2012.
“In a month or two, we will finish everything, literally, all the technical work that needs to be done for joining the European Union,” Milojko Spajic, prime minister of Montenegro, told reporters in Brussels. “All remaining chapters are in the final phase,” he said.
The European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, will still have to positively assess the changes and EU states must unanimously vote to close each outstanding chapter. Montenegro thinks that can all happen before the end of this year, which is an ambitious timeline. It hopes to become an EU member by 2028.
That’s assuming the entry is ratified by national parliaments and the French public.
There will be huge reluctance to stage a contentious referendum before French presidential elections next spring. But if it is delayed until after the presidential vote, a victory for Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally party could see the enlargement question shelved in France, possibly for years, leaving Montenegro in the lurch.
That would do serious damage to the EU’s credibility in the western Balkans and in other candidate countries, such as Ukraine and Moldova. It would be an absolute gift to Vladimir Putin’s propaganda campaign seeking to drive a wedge between western and eastern Europe.
I’ve travelled to most of the Balkan countries in the last three years. The sense is that people will believe the EU is serious about taking in new members only when they see it.
That’s why Montenegro, a country of about 620,000 people, is seen as a crucial test of whether the door really is open again. Albania is making good yards too and hopes to complete all accession homework next year. Croatia was the last country to join the union in 2013.
Ukraine and Moldova are in the foothills of their journey. Both applied to begin talks in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Sceptics of broadening membership worry countries may backtrack on democratic reforms when they are inside the tent. They also complain that it’s already difficult enough to get 27 governments on to the same page.
Hungary’s former far-right prime minister Viktor Orbán exposed a weakness in the process of deciding EU foreign policy by unanimous agreement. The populist leader weaponised that veto power to jam up the wheels of the Brussels machine and blocked EU aid for Ukraine.
That’s no reason to stall on enlargement. It would not be fair to ask countries to sit in the waiting room for another few years while the EU gets its own house in order.
Alongside Montenegro there was movement on three other membership bids on what officials dubbed “super Tuesday” this week, the most in a single day since 2002.
Ukraine and Moldova opened a second “cluster” of negotiating chapters, while Albania closed its first three chapters.
“We are demonstrating that we are preparing the ground for the accession of a new member state and that there is reality to that,” said junior minister for European affairs Thomas Byrne, who chaired the meeting of EU ministers signing off on the progress. Ireland wants to keep the momentum up during its EU presidency.
European commissioner for enlargement Marta Kos was wearing a green four-leaf clover pin to mark the day. The candidate countries she is championing as future EU member states will need all the luck they can get.
