Montenegro Moves to Front of EU Queue as Commission Eyes 2027 Treaty

The European Commission has positioned Montenegro at the head of the queue to become the European Union’s next member state, outlining a roadmap that could see accession talks wrap up in December 2026 and a formal accession treaty signed by June 2027.

The timeline appears in the Commission’s latest Enlargement Package, the executive’s yearly health check on every country seeking to join the club. According to the assessment, the Western Balkan nation has already provisionally closed 21 negotiating chapters, the policy files that applicants must harmonise with EU standards before they are allowed through the door.

For EU enlargement, which spent much of the past decade in something resembling a deep freeze, putting concrete dates on paper is a deliberate shift.

Joining the bloc requires a candidate country to swallow the entirety of EU law, sliced neatly into policy chapters covering everything from judicial standards and financial services to agriculture and public procurement. Closing 21 chapters provisionally means negotiators have completed the bulk of technical alignment on those files. If the timetable holds, Montenegro would become the first new entrant since Croatia joined in 2013, giving other Western Balkan applicants tangible evidence that accession is not merely an endless holding pattern.

Inside the Berlaymont, enlargement has often been approached with the cautious hospitality of a homeowner whose dinner guests have shown up several hours early: everyone is polite, but the chain remains on the door. The Commission’s ambitious target date marks a notable change in tempo, but drafting an assessment is the easiest part of the obstacle course.

The accession process is built on strict unanimity. While the Commission handles the technical benchmarking, every single step—from closing chapters to signing a treaty—requires the unanimous approval of all current member state governments in the Council. That leaves every national capital with a veto, ensuring domestic political interests across Europe will still have to be placated before any accession treaty becomes reality.

Montenegrin and EU negotiators will work to close the remaining negotiating chapters ahead of the December 2026 finish line.

Should the talks wrap up on schedule, the Commission will draft an Accession Treaty ahead of the targeted June 2027 signing. From there, the real endurance test begins: the treaty requires the formal consent of the European Parliament and ratification by all current member states, a domestic legislative tour that typically adds another year or two before actual membership takes effect.