Update, 17 March 2025: Montenegro has provisionally closed Chapter 21 (Trans-European Networks). At present, 14 chapters are provisionally closed.
Update, 26 January 2025: Montenegro has provisionally closed Chapter 32 (Financial Control). At present, 13 chapters are provisionally closed.
Update, 16 December 2025: Montenegro has provisionally closed Chapters 3 (Right of Establishment and Freedom to Provide Services), 4 (Free Movement of Capital), 6 (Company Law), 11 (Agriculture and Rural Development) and 13 (Fisheries). At present, 12 chapters are provisionally closed.
Update, 17 November 2025: Albania has opened Cluster 5 – ‘Resources, Agriculture and Cohesion’. At present, all 33 chapters have been opened.
Update, 16 September 2025: Albania has opened Cluster 4, ‘Green Agenda and Sustainable Connectivity’.
Brussels – From seasoned frontrunners to emerging contenders, from nerve-racking stalemates to unexpected twists and decades-long waits – where do the EU accession negotiations stand for each candidate country?
To answer this, we can look at the current progress of negotiating chapters – those under revision, those already closed, and those yet to be opened.
Montenegro and Albania are considered the two frontrunners in EU enlargement. Podgorica has opened all 33 chapters, with seven already provisionally closed. Since September 2024, Tirana has opened four clusters, comprising a total of 24 chapters currently under revision, while only nine remain unopened.
Serbia has been negotiating since 2014. Currently, 21 chapters – plus an additional one on the normalisation of relations between Serbia and Kosovo – are open, but only two are provisionally closed. The process has been stalling for almost a year following an autocratic backlash.
While the first intergovernmental conferences with North Macedonia, Moldova and Ukraine have already been held, none of their respective negotiating chapters has been opened. For two other candidates—Bosnia and Herzegovina and Georgia – and one potential candidate, Kosovo, there is not yet a negotiating framework.
On paper, Iceland would be quite advanced on its accession path – with 11 chapters provisionally closed and another 17 opened – but it decided to freeze negotiations in 2013. Türkiye‘s accession negotiations have been on hold since 2018, following the failed coup in 2016, with only 15 chapters under revision and one closed.
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