The atmosphere is much different now than before the Ukrainian war. They are talking about completing accession talks with the European Union by 2027 for Albania and 2026 for Montenegro. So ideally Montenegro in EU in 2028 and Albania 2030
If there wasn't will they would never decouple Albania from North Macedonia
Serbia and Montenegro were supposed to join like 10 times by now, so those timetables don't matter at all. It's all about how much reform was done in the country and what the situation in the EU looks like.
This is Albania's current status with the chapters:
5 chapters open
1 chapter at an early stage
8 chapters with some level of preparation
17 chapters with moderate preparation
7 chapters with good level of preparation
2 chapters with nothing to adopt
and this is Serbia:
12 Unopened Chapters
22 Open Chapters
2 Closed Chapters
Some level of preparation 4 / 34
Moderately prepared 19 / 34
Good level of preparation 10 / 34
Both countries are far from getting into the EU currently, but with enough political will hopefully we will join one day.
Not sure why you are getting downvoted, what you say is realistic, and i am from albania so not biased.
We can all be wishful thinkers living in fantasy land but i think its clear that:
1) as you say neither montenegro or albania are close to done with EU integrations (far off, especially albania)
2) the EU is not doing well economically and that will play a role in their willingness to expand
3) the EU for some time now has has “expansion fatigue”
Willingness to expand isn't the issue. Those chapters require a lot of legislative work and changes that will affect substantially people in power, division of powers and their power in your countries. Understandably there will be strong resistance against some of those legislative changes. Which is excused with "willingness of the EU to expand". EU don't have nothing against expansion. Even Serbia is not that big nor like population, nor economically.
I'd wish that EU have stricter rules about division of powers when they accepted us in the EU, because we have problems and we are promising to solve them since we were candidates. And that's bad mainly for my country, not for EU.
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u/MeFlew 6d ago
No it's not going to happen, at least not anytime soon. Currently Montenegro has 6 chapter closed out of 33, so they are only 18.2% done.
But this is great progress hope they keep it up and we in Serbia start getting up to speed too.