A deadline that almost nobody outside the Montenegrin government believed is now fifteen weeks from expiring. Podgorica promised to close every remaining accession chapter before the end of 2026. The arithmetic is unforgiving and the hardest files are still open.
Eighteen of the 33 negotiating chapters are now provisionally closed, six of them during this year alone. The 28th Accession Conference on 14 July shut Chapter 8 on competition policy and Chapter 29 on the customs union, both technically demanding and both long stuck. Officials describe the remaining fifteen as sitting at roughly 90 per cent completion, with several already transmitted to the Commission for a closing assessment.
That framing flatters the position. Chapters 23 and 24, covering judiciary and fundamental rights and then justice, freedom and security, are the two that decide the pace of every Western Balkans accession. Montenegro cleared the interim benchmark assessment on both in June 2024, which unblocked the rest of the process and explains the run of closures since. Clearing interim benchmarks is not the same as meeting closing benchmarks, and the second bar sits considerably higher.
The government has published an accession programme covering 2026 and 2027 that reads as a closing roadmap rather than a reform agenda. Ministries own individual benchmarks with dated deliverables. The Commission’s enlargement pages record the same trajectory, and successive progress reports have called Montenegro the most advanced candidate in the process.
Speed creates its own risk. Closing a chapter provisionally commits a candidate to implement the acquis in that area from accession day, and reopening is politically costly. Member states that were burned by earlier enlargements now scrutinise track records rather than legislation on paper. Judicial appointments, asset declarations and prosecutions of high-level corruption cases produce the evidence they want, and evidence accumulates on its own timetable.
There is a second constraint that has nothing to do with Montenegro. Every chapter closure requires unanimity among the 27, and several capitals have signalled they will not be rushed by a candidate’s self-imposed calendar. One government wanting to make a point about enlargement discipline can hold a technically ready chapter for months. That has happened repeatedly in this process.
Assume the end-2026 target slips. What matters then is how far it slips and whether momentum survives. Montenegro’s stated goal of membership around 2028 assumes negotiations conclude, a treaty is drafted and signed, and 27 parliaments plus the European Parliament ratify it. Ratification alone has historically taken 12 to 18 months. Even a flawless finish this December makes 2028 tight.
Supporters of the acceleration make a fair case. A candidate visibly crossing the line would restore credibility to an enlargement policy that has promised much and delivered nothing since Croatia in 2013. It would also give Ukraine, Moldova and Albania a template with dates attached rather than rhetoric. Sceptics reply that a rushed accession with thin implementation is exactly what produced the rule-of-law problems the Union is now trying to fix internally.
The next accession conference will be the tell. If three or four chapters close and Chapters 23 and 24 stay open, the 2026 target is dead in everything but name. If those two move, the schedule that looked implausible in January becomes a serious proposition.
