Brussels: For more than two years, the EU enlargement file moved in two parallel directions at once. Officially, accession negotiations with Ukraine opened in June 2024, alongside parallel talks with Moldova. In practice, the opening and closing of the thirty-three policy chapters — restructured into six clusters under the revised methodology — had been frozen by a Hungarian veto rooted in disputes over the rights of the Hungarian minority in western Ukraine. With the April 2026 Hungarian parliamentary elections returning Péter Magyar’s Tisza party and unseating Viktor Orbán after sixteen years in office, the political arithmetic in the Council has materially shifted.
Brussels has greeted the transition with cautious optimism rather than triumphalism. Enlargement Commissioner Marta Kos has framed 2026 as a watershed year for candidate countries that have presented credible plans to complete negotiations. Montenegro is targeting a 2026 close, Albania a 2027 finish, with Ukraine and Moldova aiming for 2028. Each of those dates remains conditional and merit-based, in the Commission’s standard formulation, but the very fact that target dates are being named at all marks a departure from years of polite ambiguity.
The Commission and Ukraine’s most consistent advocates within the Council — the Baltic states, the Nordic capitals, and Poland — believe all six clusters could be opened in short order, potentially as early as June, which would translate into the opening of all thirty-three chapters in a single sequence. Others urge greater caution, mindful that opening a chapter is procedurally faster than closing one, and that several Member States have constitutional procedures requiring parliamentary ratification of significant enlargement decisions.
Cluster 1, covering fundamentals — rule of law, judicial reform, democratic institutions, public procurement, statistics, and the financial control architecture — is where genuine substantive work has been concentrated. At an informal meeting of EU ministers in Lviv, which Hungary did not attend, a ten-point reform plan was endorsed for implementation in 2026, with particular emphasis on this cluster. The political logic is one of frontloading: driving technical-level reforms and monitoring their implementation as if formal accession talks were underway, then converting the work into formal chapter openings once unanimity becomes available.
The same logic could be applied to North Macedonia and Kosovo, where domestic political blockages or external bilateral disputes have stalled progress. Bosnia and Herzegovina remains in the laggards’ tier, while Serbia is now classified as a backslider in independent assessments, given the trajectory of its alignment with Russia on key foreign policy questions. Türkiye and, more recently, Georgia sit in a separate outsider category, the latter having stepped away from the accession path after a domestic political shift in 2024.
The accession instruments themselves are evolving. The 2025 Enlargement Package introduced gradual integration — meaningful market access, mobile roaming inclusion, payment area integration, and connectivity to the EU’s transport and energy networks — as benefits available before formal membership. Ukraine has been formally included in the Single European Payment Area planning, and discussions have begun on Ukraine’s eligibility for selected single-market segments ahead of accession itself. Preparatory work on an accession treaty has reportedly begun for Montenegro, an institutional step that signals confidence the Council will reach the necessary endorsements.
Each candidate state carries its own constellation of domestic obstacles, from constitutional reform in Bosnia and Herzegovina to entrenched anti-corruption challenges in Ukraine and Moldova. But the bottleneck that defined the past two years — the Hungarian veto — has been loosened. Brussels’ challenge now is to convert that opening into substantive progress before the geopolitical window narrows again.
