Opinion

Montenegro is ready. The holdup sits in Brussels, not Podgorica.

Close the chapters by the end of 2026 and sign the treaty on schedule, so the governments in the Council prove that merit moves at the speed of the willing, not at the speed of the slowest capital.

Montenegro has earned its seat, and now it is up to us to hand it over. The Commission's Enlargement Package, published on 4 November, names Podgorica the frontrunner, puts the financial package and treaty work on the table, and says the country could provisionally close its remaining chapters by the end of 2026. What stands in the way is not reform in Montenegro. It is the agreement of the member state governments in the Council. Kaja Kallas, the EU's high representative for foreign affairs, says there is a clear path to signing the accession treaty by next summer. That path is theirs to confirm or stall.

Start with what Montenegro actually did. All thirty-three negotiating chapters opened. Twenty-one provisionally closed. The Commission judged that the country met the closing benchmarks in every chapter, with decisive progress on the fundamentals: rule of law, economic governance, statistics, public administration. Marta Kos, the EU commissioner for enlargement, put it plainly: for the first time since Croatia closed its negotiations in 2011, the EU is in a position to close negotiations with another candidate. Fifteen years of waiting for a second success, and the second is within reach. Prime Minister Spajić has accepted the Commission's protective mechanisms, saying Montenegro does not fear them because it stands behind its reforms. The candidate is ready.

The momentum runs wider than one country, and that matters for the governments who hold the file. Albania opened every negotiation cluster in just over a year. Moldova and Ukraine both met the conditions to open all their remaining clusters, with Moldova aiming to close negotiations by early 2028 and Ukraine by the end of 2028. For the first time, the Commission issued indicative accession roadmaps for Montenegro, Albania, Moldova and Ukraine, putting reform effort on a dated plan. That is not one country's success. That is the enlargement machinery moving again. If governments in the Council slow what the Commission has already judged ready, they choke the mechanism at its first real test, and every reformer watching from Tirana, Chișinău and Kyiv learns that effort does not pay.

Those who would wait say membership is earned, and closing a whole candidate's chapters this fast risk letting a young democracy slide once inside. The concern is real, and the safeguards exist for a reason. But the answer is already in the Commission's own framework: Spajić points out that its clearly defined and proportional mechanisms support exactly what Montenegro wants, strong institutions and equal justice for every citizen, with changes that do not end after accession. The safeguards answer the risk. Delay does not; delay only punishes the country that did the work.

The demand is simple. The Council has adopted its conclusions on the financial package, and work on the accession treaty is under way, so what the governments owe Montenegro is now on their own table. Nothing new stands between Podgorica and the finish line. What delay answers is nothing: it teaches the reformers in Tirana, Chișinău and Kyiv that their work counts for less than a veto. Sign the treaty on schedule, member state governments, and Europe proves that merit moves at the speed of the willing.

This article was written with AI and published without an editor reading it first.