Podgorica: Montenegro has crossed the halfway mark on its long march into the European Union, closing two more negotiating chapters and pulling clear as the bloc’s enlargement frontrunner. At an accession conference on 14 July, the small Adriatic state provisionally shut the files on competition and the customs union, lifting its tally to eighteen of thirty-three.
The two closures matter because both touch sensitive machinery. The competition chapter forces a candidate to police state aid and monopolies to Union standards, while the customs file aligns border procedures with the single market. Negotiators had wrestled with each for years.
Podgorica now needs to close fifteen chapters to finish the talks, and its government still targets membership by the end of the decade. Officials in the capital argue that momentum matters, and that a steady drumbeat of closures keeps both reformers at home and sceptics in Brussels on side.
The country’s lead reflects both its size and its head start. With a population smaller than many EU cities, Montenegro can align its laws faster than larger candidates, and it opened all its chapters years ago. Earlier this year it cleared the benchmarks on the rule of law that unlock the rest of the process.
It is not travelling alone. At the same round of talks Albania completed its first three chapters, while Moldova pushed its own bid forward, signs that a process long stuck in the mud is finding traction again. The Commission has made enlargement a strategic priority amid war on the Union’s eastern flank.
Hurdles remain stubborn. The toughest chapters, on the judiciary, fundamental rights and the fight against organised crime, sit near the finish line by design, and backsliding on any of them can freeze the whole file. Brussels has learned to hold candidates to the wire.
Enthusiasm inside the Union is also uneven. Some member states want a credible path for the Western Balkans to counter Russian and Chinese influence, while others fear repeating the rushed admissions of the past. That tension shapes how fast any candidate can move, however diligent its homework.
For Montenegrins, the tally offers a rare sense of progress in a region used to waiting. Eighteen chapters closed is not membership, and the hardest bargaining still lies ahead. Yet for the first time in years, the country can plausibly argue that the finish line is in view rather than over the horizon. Diplomats caution that the final stretch often proves the slowest, yet few doubt that Montenegro has set the pace the rest of the region now measures itself against.
