{"id":883163,"date":"2026-04-09T20:52:16","date_gmt":"2026-04-09T20:52:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/883163\/"},"modified":"2026-04-09T20:52:16","modified_gmt":"2026-04-09T20:52:16","slug":"montenegro-wants-to-join-eu-for-security-pm-says-politico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/883163\/","title":{"rendered":"Montenegro wants to join EU for security, PM says \u2013 POLITICO"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cThe key for us, why we want to join the EU, is obviously common values that we all believe in, and secondly, it\u2019s the single market, it\u2019s half a billion people versus half a million Montenegrins,\u201d Spaji\u0107 said. \u201cAnd the third thing is it\u2019s a peace project, maybe even the last peace project on Earth now these days, so this is the value of the European Union.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Across Europe, non-EU countries from Iceland to Moldova have <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.eu\/article\/defense-security-wealth-eu-membership-donald-trump\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">increasingly expressed interest in joining the bloc for security and safety<\/a> rather than simply trade and economic benefits following Russia\u2019s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine and Donald Trump\u2019s threats to seize Greenland.<\/p>\n<p>Montenegro is by far the most advanced candidate country in accession negotiations, having closed 14 of 33 negotiating chapters, the criteria required to join the EU. But some member countries are skeptical about adding new members and first want to reform the bloc\u2019s decision-making process.<\/p>\n<p>Spaji\u0107 said Podgorica, which has set an ambitious target of joining the EU by 2028, was \u201c80, 90 percent there\u201d when it comes to closing the remaining chapters and was \u201cvery confident\u201d of doing so by the end of 2026.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSome of the things that we are doing now, the reforms we are doing, they are absolutely unprecedented,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>By joining the EU, Montenegro would \u201cgive hope to the Western Balkans\u201d along with \u201cpreserving enlargement as a very, very strong tool of the European Union,\u201d Spaji\u0107 argued.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cThe key for us, why we want to join the EU, is obviously common values that we all&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":883164,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5174],"tags":[6560,32,6561,2000,299,5187,1699,366,7059,6084,13491,25482,809,332,5549,811,6861,1201,335],"class_list":["post-883163","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-eu","tag-balkans","tag-donald-trump","tag-enlargement","tag-eu","tag-europe","tag-european","tag-european-union","tag-greenland","tag-iceland","tag-infrastructure","tag-moldova","tag-montenegro","tag-negotiations","tag-russia","tag-safety","tag-security","tag-single-market","tag-trade","tag-war-in-ukraine"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116376734839405400","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/883163","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=883163"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/883163\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/883164"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=883163"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=883163"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=883163"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}