Welcome to Wider Europe, RFE/RL’s new newsletter focusing on the key issues concerning the European Union, NATO, and other institutions and their relationships with the Western Balkans and Europe’s Eastern neighborhoods.
I’m RFE/RL Europe Editor Rikard Jozwiak, and this week I am drilling down on one issue: EU enlargement as Ireland takes over the EU presidency.
The Briefing: EU Enlargement High On Agenda As Ireland Takes Over Presidency
Ireland takes over the six-month rotating presidency of the Council of the EU on July 1, and that half year will be a significant one for the enlargement of the bloc for several reasons.
Montenegro might wrap up talks under Irish auspices, setting it on course to become EU member No. 28 by 2028. Ukraine, Moldova, and Albania are also set to continue their progress toward joining and there might even be some movement in the same direction for Iceland and Serbia.
There is also quite a buzz that it is the Irish taking over the baton. Dublin held the presidency when the EU carried out its big bang enlargement of 2004 — welcoming eight Central and Eastern European countries into the club as well as Cyprus and Malta.
Speaking to Irish diplomats, they point out that this is still remembered fondly on the island and numerous public surveys show that the Irish are largely supportive of enlarging the club.
In Brussels, Ireland is also seen as a proper “honest broker” on the issue – one of the few member states whose government has never blocked any enlargement steps and doesn’t have any bilateral issues with any of the candidate countries.
The issue is one of Dublin’s top priorities for the coming months, and significant progress is therefore expected.
Montenegro — No. 28 in 2028?
Montenegro is obviously the one to watch at the moment.
The small Western Balkan country has currently closed 16 out of 33 accession chapters, with each chapter corresponding to a policy area in which a candidate must adopt EU rules and regulations in that specific field.
Podgorica wants to close the remaining 17 during the Irish presidency. The Irish prime minister, Micheal Martin, was in Montenegro in early June in conjunction with the EU-Western Balkans summit and noted that it would be “challenging” to complete everything in the next six months but that this was Dublin’s goal.
Cyprus, the current holder of the rotating presidency, could still close up to three more chapters at the very end of June before it hands over the baton to the Irish who then hope to have regular intergovernmental conferences (known in Brussels as “IGCs”) in the autumn where more chapters will be closed.
An EU diplomat with knowledge of the matter noted that Montenegro needs to wrap up all the negotiations in 2026 or very early in the following year to be able to meet its target of becoming EU member state No. 28 in 2028. That timeline reflects the need for the accession treaty to be ratified by all 27 EU member states, a process that could take a year — if not more.
It is also worth noting here that more frequent meetings are planned during the Irish presidency for the specific working group in Brussels that deals with the drafting of Montenegro’s EU accession treaty. Set up in April, the group started drafting in May and things have gone smoothly so far, according to European officials that RFE/RL has spoken to.
Albania Closing In
Cyprus may also manage to close the very first chapters with Albania at the end of June, but if it doesn’t, Ireland is expected to do so in July.
After racing to open all chapters in 2024-2025, Tirana has been stuck so far on trying to meet the so-called interim benchmarks in chapters 23 and 24, which deal with the rule of law. It finally managed to achieve this at the end of May.
With the bloc worried about the state of the judiciary and fundamental rights in many candidate countries, it is not enough to just open and close talks in those two chapters. Interim benchmarks must be met. Those benchmarks are set by all 27 EU member states, which must then unanimously determine that they have been fulfilled before establishing the closing benchmarks for the candidate country.
Having met its interim rule-of-law benchmarks, Albania could soon close three accession chapters: science and research, education and culture, and external relations.
How Fast For Ukraine And Moldova?
With Ukraine and Moldova continuing to move hand in hand through the enlargement process there was a breakthrough when the first cluster of five chapters were opened last week after Hungary had blocked this for over two years under the previous Fidesz-led government.
There is hope in the European Commission that the pair can open the remaining five clusters (containing the 28 remaining chapters) in late June or more likely when the Irish take over in July. According to the commission and most EU member states, Kyiv and Chisinau are ready to do this.
But there are doubts that it will go that fast.
Budapest may have recently softened its approach to some extent, but during the EU summit last week, Hungary’s new Prime Minister Peter Magyar deleted the wording “as soon as possible” from the summit’s final communique when referring to the opening of the remaining clusters. He had previously spoken about “no fast-track membership” for Kyiv, something that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy pushed for at the same summit.
Instead, Magyar has given a 10-15-year time frame for Ukraine to become a member. But there are indications that others are hiding behind Budapest. Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico, for example, recently spoke about Ukraine’s membership as a “long-term, long-term process.”
A Polish Issue?
European diplomats who spoke to RFE/RL on condition of anonymity said that Czechia and, in particular, Poland appear comfortable with Budapest slowing down the process, as they “don’t have to express an exact opinion.”
A Polish diplomat said Warsaw has not yet adopted a position on the matter but believes opening all the remaining chapters and clusters at once would amount to a “fast-tracked” accession process, which it opposes.
Instead, Warsaw would prefer “a salami process” — opening a few chapters at a time. In fact, Poland would be OK with opening cluster 6 on foreign policy now, but only that one.
One idea currently doing the rounds in Brussels is to open two clusters in July and the remaining three in the autumn. The same approach would apply to Moldova, even though there is no indication that any EU capital has major political isues with Chisinau. For now, however, there are no signs that the two countries will be decoupled in the accession process.
Nonetheless, the issue underscores a point European diplomats have been making for years: Hungary is unlikely to be the only obstacle to Ukraine’s EU accession. The country’s other immediate EU neighbors may also slow down Kyiv’s European integration.
The warning signs were already there for the last few years when farmers in many of the eastern member states pushed against the inflow of Ukrainian agricultural goods. Ask many officials or politicians from these countries and they will also complain about Ukrainian transport companies undercutting local haulers or general gripes about the “chronic corruption” in Ukraine that remains unresolved.
In Poland’s case, its complicated history with Ukraine is likely to spill over onto the EU scene. This was on full display when the nationalist Polish President Karol Nawrocki over the weekend decided to strip Zelenskyy of the Order of the White Eagle, the country’s highest state honor, because Ukraine has named a military unit after the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), a group blamed for the Volhynia massacres of tens of thousands of ethnic Poles in 1943-1945.
While the move largely could be seen as being about domestic politics – with the conservative Nawrocki trying to spar with the more liberal and Ukraine-friendlier Prime Minister Donald Tusk ahead of next autumn’s general election, these sorts of clashes could have consequences for Ukraine’s EU bid.
Nawrocki is tapping into anti-Ukrainian sentiment that has been around for a while in large segments of Polish society.
Two parties further to the right — Confederation (Konfederacja) and the Crown (Korona) — have been known to tap into anti-Ukrainian sentiment, and Nawrocki’s Law and Justice party (PiS) is keen to win over those voters as it seeks to narrow the gap with Tusk’s Civic Coalition (KO), which leads in the polls, albeit by a single-digit margin.
The episode could also put Tusk in a difficult position.
With a majority of Poles appearing to support Nawrocki’s move, the Polish prime minister may find it harder to advocate for the rapid opening of all remaining accession chapters for Ukraine. As one Polish official put it to RFE/RL: “It may have provided us with an extra argument to go slower.”
Serbia And Iceland Stepping Up?
It is also worth checking out two more countries that can start moving during the next six months.
One is Serbia.
With Montenegro and Albania steaming ahead, Belgrade is keen to get going as well, having stood still on its EU path since late 2021.
There is speculation in EU corridors that the country could open a whole cluster of chapters, dealing mainly with economics and competitiveness as early as July, particularly because France is pushing for this to happen.
Others, however, are still reluctant.
The Baltic states are fretting about Serbia’s nonalignment on the bloc’s Russia sanctions policy, even if their tough stance on this isn’t as principled as before.
Then there are countries, notably the Netherlands, which won’t want to see Belgrade moving forward on EU accession anytime soon due to serious rule of law issues in the country.
It could, however, be something to watch in the coming months.
Then there is Iceland.
The island nation applied to join the EU back in 2009 after it was shaken by a financial crisis.
Starting accession talks shortly thereafter, it managed to close 11 out of 33 negotiating chapters until a new government notified Brussels in 2013 that — with the bloc in the middle of the eurozone crisis — it was suspending talks.
That actually happened during an Irish EU presidency as well.
In a historical quirk, Iceland will now have a referendum in late August on whether to resume accession talks — and Ireland is again at the wheel if the Icelanders vote in favour, which polls are indicating they might although the margin is tight.
This possibility has not gone unnoticed in Ireland with the country’s Europe minister, Thomas Byrne, noting that the Icelanders “suspended their negotiations during the last Irish presidency. So, if they were to restart from there, I think it would be a big moment for us.”
A Quartet Of Laggards
While there is a lot of movement on enlargement there are four countries that are expected to stand still — Bosnia-Herzegovina, Georgia, Kosovo, and North Macedonia.
Due to internal complications, Sarajevo still hasn’t managed to nominate a chief negotiator for EU talks. Moreover, two laws that Brussels needed the country to introduce — one concerning the functioning of the judiciary and another aimed at limiting political interference in the court system — have not yet been passed.
In North Macedonia, constitutional changes needed to reflect the status of Bulgarians in the country have not yet passed and there is no indication that they will anytime soon.
Georgia is a candidate country in name only according to the European Commission. After numerous spats with Brussels, the Tbilisi government has effectively suspended any effort to launch accession talks until 2028. The stripping of its candidate status is considered unlikely, and EU officials note that the next move must come from Georgia.
Kosovo faces a different problem.
Although it submitted its EU membership application in late 2022, the request has yet to be forwarded to the European Commission for assessment. The reason is that the five EU member states that do not recognize Kosovo’s statehood — Cyprus, Greece, Romania, Slovakia, and Spain — have not agreed to move the process forward.
Ireland is likely to test the waters with these five during its presidency. The last member state to try this was Sweden in early 2023, but Stockholm was rebuffed, notably by Madrid. Few in Brussels believe there will be any change on that front in the coming months.
That’s all for this week! Feel free to reach out to me on any of these issues on Twitter @RikardJozwiak, or via e-mail at [email protected].
Until next time,
Rikard Jozwiak
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