Montenegro will close five chapters in the accession negotiations with the European Union (EU) at the intergovernmental conference to be held on December 16 in Brussels.
Thus, Montenegro will close chapter 3 (Right to establish a company and freedom to provide services), 4 (Free movement of capital), 6 (Law of commercial companies) as well as chapters 11 (Agriculture and rural development) and 13 (Fisheries).
After the ceremonial closing of the chapter, the Montenegrin example Milojko Spajić will hold a press conference with the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, and the European Commissioner for Enlargement, Marta Kos.
The closing of the five chapters was uncertain until Friday, when France blocked the opening of the chapters on fisheries and agriculture and rural development, and the turn followed the intensive diplomatic mission of Prime Minister Milojko Spajić and his team, especially after talks with French President Emmanuel Macron.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz previously said that the European Union and Montenegro can soon start working on the EU accession agreement and reminded that the country has made the most progress among the candidate countries.
Montenegro applied for EU membership in December 2008, and accession negotiations between Montenegro and the EU began in June 2012.
So far, only seven chapters have been temporarily closed, and the last one, the one on public procurement, was closed in June 2025.
For Montenegro, the main challenges remain chapters 23 and 24, which relate to the rule of law, the independence of the judiciary and the fight against corruption.
At the end of December last year, after a seven-year break, Montenegro closed three chapters: on intellectual property, information society and industrial policy. It was an important signal that the process is gaining momentum again. However, on the same day, Croatia stopped the closure of Chapter 31, which refers to foreign, security and defense policy.
Zagreb then stated that it is not blocking Montenegro, but that there are “open issues” that need to be resolved, among them the Jadran ship, demarcation, missing persons and the prosecution of war crimes.
According to the European Commission’s regular annual report on the progress of candidate countries for membership in the European Union, Montenegro has made the most progress, and by the end of next year, the country wants to complete negotiations, which would assume official membership in 2028.
