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EU Candidates

Issue 5 · Sunday, 26 July 2026

EU Candidates Weekly Brief

No accession conference took place this week. The Commission published the 2026 Rule of Law Report with chapters on four candidate countries, and the Council working party on enlargement met on 22 July to take the screening results for Ukraine and Moldova on two more clusters.

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This week

Albania · Montenegro · North Macedonia · Serbia · 17 July 2026

Rule of Law Report carries chapters on four candidate countries

The Commission published the 2026 Rule of Law Report. It has country chapters for all 27 member states and for Albania, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia. On the justice system, the Commission says judicial reforms continued in most of the four while concerns persisted about undue influence hampering judicial independence. On corruption, it says legal and institutional frameworks were strengthened while the investigation, prosecution and adjudication of corruption cases need to be further improved. On media, it says concerns persist over media market concentration and the editorial independence of public broadcasters. The report makes no recommendations to the four. The Commission states that recommendations to enlargement countries are issued only in the yearly Enlargement Package, which it published on 4 November last year.

European Commission ↗Commission Q and A ↗

Ukraine · Moldova · Montenegro · 22 July 2026

Council working party takes the Ukraine and Moldova screening results

The Council working party on enlargement and countries negotiating accession to the EU met in Brussels. Its published agenda lists three items: the outcome of screening for Ukraine on clusters 2 and 3, the outcome of screening for Moldova on the same two clusters, and an exchange of views on the financial package for the accession negotiations with Montenegro. Cluster 2 is the internal market and cluster 3 is competitiveness and inclusive growth. Screening is the step that has to finish before a cluster can open. The Council has published the agenda and its document references. It has not published an outcome, so we do not know what member states concluded.

Council of the EU, CM 3777/26 ↗

Ukraine · 15 July 2026

Commission sets out Ukraine Facility money for defence industry

At the EU-Ukraine Defence Industry Forum in Kyiv the Commission presented the financing available under Pillar II of the Ukraine Facility for dual-use and defence-related projects in Ukraine. The page names Ukraine's National Development Institution, Bpifrance, Finnvera with the Finnish foreign ministry, Poland's Bank Gospodarstwa Krajowego and the Czech Narodni rozvojova banka as participating institutions. This is a financing step. It does not open or close a chapter and it does not change where Ukraine stands in the negotiations.

European Commission ↗

The forecast

  • Montenegromost advanced
    most likely 2031
    2028 to 2034
  • Albania
    most likely 2032
    2028 to 2036
  • Moldova
    most likely 2033
    2029 to 2037
  • Ukraine
    most likely 2033
    2029 to openwar
  • Serbia
    most likely 2037
    2031 to openstalled
  • North Macedonia
    most likely 2037
    2031 to openstalled

Each bar spans the earliest to the latest estimate, with the most likely year marked in blue. A bar that fades on the right has no firm upper bound, because of war or a political standstill. The scale starts at 2028.

Not on the clock

  • Bosnia and Herzegovina. Candidate since December 2022. Negotiations have not formally opened: no negotiating framework adopted, no first conference held.
  • Georgia. Candidate since December 2023. The accession process is on hold over concerns about democratic backsliding.
  • Turkiye. Negotiations opened in 2005 but have been frozen since 2018, with no chapters moving.
  • Kosovo. Applied in December 2022. A potential candidate, candidate status not yet granted.

What we are watching

  • Ukraine and Moldova each have two of six clusters open. Screening for clusters 2 and 3 is the step before those clusters can open. Unconfirmed: press reports around 21 July described efforts to get Hungary to lift its block on opening further clusters with Ukraine. We found no Council or Commission document that confirms this, so we are not treating it as fact. We will record a third open cluster for either country only when the Commission or the Council confirms a conference.
  • The Montenegro financial package reached the working party as an exchange of views. No Council decision on it has been published. We hold it until a decision document exists.
  • The institutions are heading into the August break, so few accession decisions are likely before September. The next fixed point in the calendar is the yearly Enlargement Package, which came out on 4 November last year.

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MontenegroAlbaniaMoldovaUkraineSerbiaNorth MacedoniaBosnia and HerzegovinaGeorgiaTürkiyeKosovo

Sources

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