Brussels: The question that once felt abstract now sits on the Council table, because EU enlargement has moved from rhetoric to hard scheduling. EU affairs ministers formally approved the opening of Cluster 6 for Ukraine’s accession negotiations in July, and Moldova is expected to follow along the same linked pathway.
The unlock came from an unlikely place. After Hungary’s general election in the first half of 2026, Budapest lifted its veto over accession talks, and the Council promptly agreed to open the fundamentals cluster for both Ukraine and Moldova. One national election reshaped a continental timetable, a reminder of how thin the margins remain when unanimity governs every step.
Two speeds, one deadline
The Western Balkans supply the benchmark against which Kyiv now measures itself. The Commission judges that Montenegro can close its remaining chapters during 2026 and prepare to join by 2028, with Albania trailing perhaps a year behind. Ukraine, unwilling to wait, calls for accession as early as 2027, while the Commission supports a 2028 target for wrapping up talks.
Those dates collide with capacity. Enlargement is not only a test of the candidates but of the union that must absorb them, and a member the size of Ukraine would reshape the budget, the farm subsidy system and the balance of votes in the Council. The Commission’s enlargement work increasingly pairs candidate reforms with internal reforms the EU has long postponed.
The analytical weakness lies in the gap between political will and institutional readiness. A coalition of willing capitals wants to drive the process forward, yet the union has not resolved how it will vote, spend or govern with more than thirty members. Opening clusters is the easy part; closing them demands verifiable progress on the rule of law, corruption and public administration that no amount of geopolitical urgency can fake.
The cost of moving too slowly
Delay carries its own price. Analysts who favour faster accession argue that a stalled process erodes reform momentum in candidate states and hands leverage to outside powers eager to fill the vacuum. Ukraine’s wartime government has pushed through an extraordinary volume of legislative change, and supporters warn that letting that energy dissipate would waste a rare opening.
Enlargement also carries an economic dividend that critics often understate. A single market stretching to the Black Sea would widen supply chains, deepen the labour pool and give European firms scale to rival larger rivals, provided the union manages the transition with credible transition periods and targeted funds.
Sceptics counter that admitting members before they are ready would import weak institutions into the core, and they point to earlier enlargements where backsliding followed accession rather than preceding it. Both cautions deserve weight, and the honest answer is that the 2028 horizon is plausible for Montenegro, ambitious for Ukraine and dependent on reforms the union itself keeps deferring.
What makes this round different is momentum on both sides of the table. For the first time in years, candidate states and the Commission share a concrete calendar rather than a vague promise. Whether Europe can absorb newcomers by 2028 will depend less on the candidates’ paperwork than on the union’s willingness to change its own rules before the door swings open.
