EU-Western Balkans Summit held in Montenegro: EU remains committed to enlargement

The European Council used the EU-Western Balkans summit in Tivat, Montenegro, on 5 June to project momentum on enlargement — drafting Montenegro's Accession Treaty, advancing Albania through three negotiating chapters, and unlocking the first enlargement cluster with Ukraine and Moldova. For Paris, the subtext is harder to ignore: the EU is committing publicly to a 28th member by 2028 while its own institutional machinery remains unreformed.

Montenegro on a fast track — and a familiar caveat

European Council President António Costa confirmed that the EU began drafting Montenegro's Accession Treaty last month, setting a target for membership by 2028. That timeline is more than diplomatic boilerplate. It is a political signal to Belgrade, Tirana, and Skopje that the accession queue still moves, even as enlargement fatigue festers in several EU capitals. Commission President Ursula von der Leyen tied the political message to economics: single market access, she said, will follow reforms — not the other way around. The conditionality is not new, but the sequencing has hardened. No serious anti-corruption track, no accelerated integration.

The French question that Tivat does not answer

France has spent five years arguing — first under Macron's 2019 "non-Brain" intervention, then through the 2022–2024 enlargement debate — that the EU must reform its institutions before absorbing new members. Tivat papers over that tension. Six Western Balkan states plus Ukraine and Moldova are now on various tracks toward membership. The qualified-majority voting debate, the size of the European Commission, the reweighting of the Council: none of it has been resolved. The summit's Growth Plan, designed to funnel €6 billion into the region's economy through reforms, is, in practice, a workaround. It deepens integration without forcing the constitutional argument Paris once insisted on having. For the Quai d'Orsay, that is an uncomfortable trade dressed up as pragmatism.

What to watch from Paris

Three markers will tell French readers whether the Tivat pledges survive contact with reality. First, the Intergovernmental Conference with Albania and the closure of its three negotiating chapters — a concrete test of whether the Commission keeps the process technical rather than political. Second, Serbia's electoral and judicial reform timetable, benchmarked against ODIHR and Venice Commission recommendations. Belgrade's alignment with the EU's Common Foreign and Security Policy is, as Costa put it, the measure of whether the "community of values" claim still has traction. Third, the opening of the first cluster with Ukraine and Moldova this week. If that step slips, the credibility of the 2028 Montenegro target slips with it. The summit delivered a confident script. The next six months decide whether the EU is willing to fund it.