Podgorica: In the Montenegrin capital, where membership of the bloc has been a national goal for the better part of two decades, officials had reason for cautious cheer this month. A round of accession conferences in mid-July pushed the country further ahead of the pack, and the wider EU accession process found rare momentum.

Montenegro provisionally closed two more negotiating chapters, on competition policy and, fittingly for a trading nation, the customs union. That brings the tally of closed chapters to 18, more than half the total, and cements its place as the front-runner among the candidates.

The government still aims to join the bloc by 2028, an ambitious target that would make the small Adriatic state the first new member in more than a decade. Officials in Podgorica insist the timetable is tight but not fanciful if reforms hold.

Albania advanced too, closing its first three chapters, on science and research, education and culture, and external relations. Tirana hopes to wrap up its negotiations in 2027, a pace that would have seemed unthinkable only a few years ago.

Both countries opened a fresh cluster of talks covering foreign relations, security and defence, alongside trade, development cooperation and humanitarian aid. Moving into that group signals that the technical grind has reached the harder, more political stretches of the process.

The renewed energy owes much to geopolitics. Russia’s war on Ukraine reordered the bloc’s thinking on enlargement, turning a slow bureaucratic exercise into a strategic priority meant to anchor the Western Balkans firmly in Europe’s orbit.

Progress remains uneven across the region. Serbia’s path is snagged on rule-of-law concerns and its relations with Kosovo, while Bosnia and Herzegovina lags far behind, a reminder that the frontrunners are exceptions rather than the rule. A fuller account sat with regional coverage of the conferences.

The bloc itself must prepare, too. Absorbing new members will test its budget, its voting rules and its decision-making, and some capitals want internal reform locked in before the door swings open to anyone.

Closing a chapter is not the same as finishing the job. Provisional closures can reopen if backsliding creeps in, and candidates must sustain reforms on courts, corruption and media freedom long after the negotiating tables fold up.

Still, for a region long promised a European future that never quite arrived, the July conferences offered something concrete. In Podgorica the talk is no longer only of aspiration, but of a date, and of the work left to earn it.