The European Commission's annual enlargement report appears to show the EU's executive is serious about adding new members by the time its five-year mandate ends in late 2029. And it has identified four candidates for that purpose: Albania, Moldova, Montenegro, and Ukraine.
The November 4 report, the first issued since the new commission took office late last year, is designed to assess the progress (or lack thereof) of 10 EU hopefuls, which also include Bosnia-Herzegovina, Georgia, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Serbia, and Turkey.
But this year the report took on a distinctly geopolitical tone.
According to officials in Brussels, EU enlargement has become a thing again. The last country to join was Croatia back in 2013, and since then the bloc actually contracted for the first time ever when Britain left in 2020.
The 2025 annual report states that the "this is the first Commission mandate since 2010-2014 where, given the accelerating pace of the process for some candidate countries, enlargement is a realistic possibility" and that the entire process "now moving faster than in the last 15 years."
The change of pace has everything to do with Russia's full-scale attack on Ukraine -- launched in 2022 -- with EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas noting that "geopolitical shifts make the case for enlargement clear-cut. Enlargement is not a nice-to-have; it is a necessity if we want to be a stronger player on the world stage."
The Money's On Montenegro
The smart money is on Montenegro being the next addition. Podgorica aims to wrap up EU accession talks by the end of 2026, and the report notes that the country "is on track to meet this ambitious objective."
Ultimately, this isn't the call of the European Commission, nor the candidate countries. The 27 current EU member states decide via unanimity to open and close the 33 accession chapters covering all policy fields that EU hopefuls need to adopt in order to become a fully-fledged member.
Podgorica has been negotiating for 13 years already, and while it has opened talks on all 33 chapters, it has managed to close just seven. However, most of those have been in the past 12 months, which shows a momentum toward accession.
In December, it plans to close another five, but this might be a bit too optimistic according to EU diplomats contacted by RFE/RL. Worries remain, especially regarding the fight against organized crime and corruption and the independence of the judiciary.
Thus, next year may be too soon, but word on the street says Montenegro very well might be "EU member state number 28 in '28."
Albania The Next Best Bet
Albania might be the next best bet for membership.
The government in Tirana hopes to conclude talks in 2027, and the commission believes this is doable. Albania's candidate progress in the past 12 months has been nothing short of stunning: It has managed to open 28 of 33 chapters and is set to commence negotiations on the final five later this month.
The key, however, is closing the chapters, and that is more difficult. Tirana also faces a PR challenge: While Albania is a growing tourist destination -- and plenty of Europeans are snapping up coastal properties there -- the country still carries the negative reputation of being a hotbed of organized crime.
It's no surprise then that the European Commission recommends Tirana put even more effort into "investigations of drug traffickers and an increase in identifying and the dismantling of criminal groups."
What About Moldova And Ukraine?
Moldova and Ukraine, meanwhile, solidly remain "coupled" -- as they have since both applied for membership in 2022 -- despite rumors this year that they'll be separated.
Forging its own path would have allowed Moldova to start accession talks as Ukraine has been blocked by Hungary for over a year and is likely to remain stalled until the next parliamentary election in the Central European country in April 2026.
Moldova hopes to join in 2028, and Ukraine believes it could join at some point this decade despite the ongoing war. Both countries received the best assessments by the commission to date even though Kyiv was cautioned earlier this year about the influence of the special anti-corruption agencies NABU and SAP.
While the countries remain blocked, all EU member states bar Hungary have agreed to continue the technical work with Chisinau and Kyiv while waiting to get the final political green light from Budapest that could come with a change of government next year. The idea is then to open as many chapters as possible immediately.
The common belief in most EU capitals is that roughly half can be opened. Enlargement Commissioner Marta Kos even remarked, somewhat optimistically, that negotiations on all 33 can commence immediately if only Budapest would change its mind.
Streamlining The Enlargement Process
In the meantime, talks will continue on how to make the enlargement process more practical. The president of the European Council, Antonio Costa, floated the idea that only unanimity should be needed to start and finish accession talks -- a suggestion quickly shot down by EU member states that prefer to have several brakes to pull to slow down the process.
Hungary isn't the only country having issues with its non-EU neighbors: Bulgaria is currently blocking North Macedonia, and Croatia wants to keep Serbia in check before Belgrade can join.
Plenty of other types of political "test balloons" have also been released in recent weeks on how enlargement can work. There's been talk of not letting new members have voting rights on certain issues -- a sort of secondary membership that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy immediately dismissed when asked about it last week.
The European Commission will in the meantime work on pre-enlargement policy reviews and reforms in order to assess the impact of new members on various policy areas.
Kos already floated the idea of a mechanism to suspend voting rights or deny access to EU funds for new members in case of rule-of-law violations. All this is a clear nod to older, Western EU member states that have been lukewarm on expanding the club out of fear of "another Hungary" in reference to Viktor Orban's many rule-of-law transgressions and battles with Brussels over the years.
The most likely way to make enlargement manageable is something used in the past: transition periods. This mechanism was used in the 2004 enlargement of eight Central and Eastern European countries, whose citizens, for example, weren't allowed to immediately seek work in other parts of the EU.
Poland, with its large agrarian market, was also not fully integrated into the EU's single market overnight. A similar arrangement for Ukrainian agricultural products, which have caused political problems in parts of the club, would not be surprising.
Of the four candidate countries, Ukraine has the most uphill battle ahead, given its size and the challenges of the war.
It will be much easier for the EU to "absorb" Albania, Moldova, and Montenegro. Kos alluded to the fact that the population of Montenegro, at roughly 600,000, is the same as the Belgian port city of Antwerp, and that Albania and Moldova, with fewer than 3 million citizens each, are like Rome.
Don't be surprised if these countries are EU members 28, 29, and 30.
