EU Candidates Weekly Brief

This week

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

• The calendar. The working party meets on 15 September with the Ukraine and Moldova screening files on its agenda for a third time, and on 18 September in capitals format for an exchange of views on safeguards in future accession treaties. The Commission president gives the State of the Union address on 16 September. The General Affairs Council is expected to meet on 22 September; we could not confirm that date against a Council page this week, so treat it as unconfirmed. The European Council will hold a strategic discussion on enlargement and reforms at its October meeting, which its June conclusions set. Last year's Enlargement Package came out on 4 November, and this year's has no confirmed date. We will record a third open cluster for Ukraine or Moldova only when the Commission or the Council confirms a conference.
• Montenegro and Kosovo. Six Montenegro chapters are in common-position drafting and the chapter 33 conclusions are in draft, so more closures are possible this autumn. Unconfirmed: press reports speak of a first draft of Montenegro's accession treaty by the end of September. No treaty text has been published, and the 18 September discussion on treaty safeguards is the only related item in the Council register, so we hold the treaty until a document exists. The Commission's Reform and Growth Facility page still lists no release of funds to Kosovo; the most recent release, on 20 May, went to Albania, Montenegro and North Macedonia. Kosovo's first performance assessment has still not been published.
• Serbia. Unconfirmed: press reports say the president has called a parliamentary election for 25 October and plans to resign before it. We have no EU institutional or Serbian gazette source for either, and the resignation has not happened, so we record nothing. Two EU texts in the period bear on this and neither describes the events. The working party's 15 September agenda lists an update on the latest political developments in Serbia, with the same item for North Macedonia, Albania and Montenegro. And the EEAS statement of 7 September on the death of Ratko Mladić says that glorification of war criminals, genocide denial and revisionism have no place in the EU or in EU candidate countries. It names no country.

Follow specific countries

Get milestones for a country in your inbox. Pick one to set up alerts.

MontenegroAlbaniaMoldovaUkraineSerbiaNorth MacedoniaBosnia and HerzegovinaGeorgiaTürkiyeKosovo