Montenegro is not preparing to enter the European Union as a junior partner. That was the clearest political message from Maida Gorčević, the country’s minister of European affairs, at a breakfast briefing with journalists in Brussels hosted by MEP Marjan Šarec (Renew, Slovenia).
Against a backdrop of talk in some capitals about “safeguards” against democratic backsliding, delayed voting rights and even a decade or more before new members enjoy the same status as the current 27, Gorčević insisted that Podgorica wants full-fledged membership.
“Montenegro is very clear. We want full-fledged membership,” she said. A country that has negotiated for 14 years and is “delivering more than 100 percent,” she argued, “needs to be equal based on the founding treaties as well.” Equality, she added later, “is very important for us.”
The remark is not a rhetorical flourish. It is Montenegro’s answer to an emerging debate inside the Union: whether the next members should accept temporary or even structural limits on rights – on the budget, on enlargement, on foreign policy – so that older members can sleep more easily about “backsliding.” Gorčević said her government is still waiting for the Commission’s proposal.
“We are still waiting for the proposal coming from European Commission and member states,” she told the room. “The capitals didn’t decide and they don’t have this final proposal towards the candidate countries.”
She was equally explicit on another anxiety in some capitals: vetoes. “We are not going to use any veto or blockage in the future,” she said. That, she acknowledged, is “also some of the concerns coming from some of the capitals.” Montenegro’s pitch is that a small, predictable, already aligned country should be treated as an asset, not a risk — and that it will behave like Slovenia, Malta or the Baltics rather than as a blocker.
A frontrunner that wants to finish the job
Šarec opened by stressing the numbers that Podgorica now repeats in every capital: 18 of 33 chapters provisionally closed, an ambition to close the rest by the end of 2026, NATO membership, and full alignment with the EU’s common foreign and security policy.
“If European Union isn’t present in Western Balkans, then somebody else will be or already is,” he said.
Gorčević added the operational detail: nine closing packages have already been sent to the Commission; the remaining six are due by the end of this month. From Montenegro’s side, she said, the technical work on all remaining chapters — including the hardest ones, rule of law (23 and 24) and environment (27) — should be finished this month.
That timetable is why the political argument now matters more than the next benchmark. If Podgorica delivers, the question shifts from “can they close chapters?” to “on what terms will they join?” Gorčević’s answer is that gradual integration and the Growth Plan are useful bridges, but they are not a substitute for membership. “Our main task is… to fulfill all the criteria. So tomorrow we can be the full-fledged member with 100% rights, but with rights there are obligations, and vice versa.”
On backsliding specifically, she tried to turn the debate around. Montenegro, she said, wants the strongest possible rule-of-law mechanisms “because of ourselves,” not only because Brussels asks. Constitutional changes already agreed with the opposition go beyond closing benchmarks. “Whatever the European Commission sends as a suggestion on the rule of law through the safeguards, we are there.” What she would not accept is a second-class status written into the accession treaty as a default. Temporary restrictions tied to proven backsliding are one discussion; a 10- or 15-year waiting room for voting rights, regardless of performance, is another. Pressed on the latter, she kept returning to the founding treaties and to the logic of small states: if budget or foreign-policy decisions move to qualified majority without the current consensus culture, smaller members lose voice. Montenegro, she repeated, is not the country that will block others.
The communication gap – and France
The more uncomfortable part of the briefing was political, not technical. Several journalists, including this one, asked whether Podgorica has a plan to explain itself to European publics that are growing colder on enlargement – and to France in particular, where a future president could put accession to a referendum.
Gorčević admitted a lag. “We were so focused on delivering that we didn’t communicate all the time,” she said. “We weren’t that much present in the member states.” That phase, she claimed, is ending. “Yes, we are starting the communication now. Once we have the results, once we deliver… now we are the easy case to communicate.” From Montenegro’s perspective, perhaps. Convincing parliaments – and, if it comes to that, French voters – is another matter.
France, she said, is “definitely one of uncertainties, not for Montenegro, but for the EU also, because you cannot predict at this moment the result of the elections.” A parliamentary route with a three-fifths majority would be one strategy; a referendum would be another, “costly, not only for us… it will be costly for France organizing for one country.” A small state cannot cover a nationwide French campaign alone. “We need the support not only of the funds but also of EU allies.” She said Podgorica will talk to all political families, including those that have already signalled they would vote against any new member. Timing will be delicate: enlargement is not a popular campaign theme.
That is the external risk. The internal one is 2027. Montenegro’s next parliamentary elections are expected in June that year. Gorčević warned that an anti-EU narrative may not come first from domestic politicians but “from abroad.” Foreign information manipulation and interference (she used the Commission’s acronym, FIMI) is already on the government’s radar. Podgorica is talking to the Commission and to member-state allies about it. “We shouldn’t take for granted the communication in our own country.” Seventy percent public support for membership is an asset; it is not a permanent shield.
Spain’s languages, and other bilateral weather
Asked by EUalive whether Spain’s push to make Catalan, Basque and Galician official EU languages could become an obstacle, Gorčević said she had spoken to her Spanish counterpart after the announcement. The message she brought back was that Madrid does not intend a blockage of Montenegro. He “fully believes” the Spanish languages can be handled before Montenegro joins, or at the same time, and that the issue “doesn’t mean any kind of blockage.” Unanimity is still required for new official languages; that fight, she suggested, is the EU’s, not Podgorica’s accession fight.
Spain ties Catalan official status to EU enlargement, raising alarm in Montenegro
On the domestic language debate – periodic attempts to elevate Serbian as an official language of Montenegro – she treated it as a neighbouring country’s future file, not Montenegro’s closing benchmark. Chapter 34 (translation of the acquis into Montenegrin) remains open. Primary legislation is due to be translated by the end of this year; the rest by accession. Similarities with Croatian do not, in her view, spare Montenegro the work: legal language is different, and Podgorica wants Montenegrin as an official EU language as a political signal, not a shortcut.
Bilateral issues with Croatia exist and are known; committees are working on them. Gorčević said they should be settled before accession so they do not enter the treaty. Influence from Serbia she described mainly as media ownership and campaign noise around Serbia’s own elections, not as a direct veto threat from Belgrade over Montenegro going first. The sharper concern she named was Russian interference around the 2027 vote.
North Macedonia as the warning, not the parallel
Šarec used North Macedonia as the cautionary tale the EU should not repeat with Montenegro. Support for accession among Montenegrin citizens, he said, remains strong – stronger, in his recollection, than it was in his own country in 2003–2004, when Slovenia was still negotiating. That mood, he argued, has not soured in Podgorica the way it has elsewhere in the region. North Macedonia “was a front runner, but in 2019, [a] wrong decision has been made, and since then North Macedonia is not [the] front runner.”
Under the present government in Skopje, he went further: the country “doesn’t have a will even to join the European Union.”
The point was political, not technical. Leave a candidate waiting long enough, after it has already done the hard work, and the public – and then the government – can simply walk away. “We don’t want the same thing [to] happen[] in Montenegro.” For Šarec, that is why Brussels has to be ready to deliver once Podgorica closes the remaining chapters: enlargement, he said, is also about not disappointing citizens who still believe the Union will keep its side of the bargain.
What Brussels still has to deliver
Gorčević’s version of the same argument was sharper still. If the process is merit-based, delivery cannot be one-sided. “We expect from the EU to deliver. If we are delivering, we are expecting the same thing from the EU.” She would not give a date for an accession treaty. First the chapters, she said; signing would be next year’s business, and the Commission should announce it.
The briefing left a consistent picture. Montenegro is racing to finish the technical file in 2026. It will accept robust rule-of-law safeguards because it claims to want them for itself. It will not campaign for a veto it says it will never use. What it will not do is sign up in advance to be less than a member. The Commission’s forthcoming ideas on safeguards, the French electoral calendar, FIMI around the 2027 elections, and Spain’s language dossier are now part of the same story: a small candidate trying to reach the finish line while the Union argues with itself about what “membership” should still mean.
Caption: Maida Gorčević, Montenegro’s minister of European affairs, at a breakfast briefing with journalists in Brussels hosted by MEP Marjan Šarec (Renew, Slovenia) [Photo credit: Georgi Gotev, EUalive]
Updated: September 9, 2026 – 11:20