The European Commissioner for European Neighbourhood Policy and Enlargement Negotiations, Marta Kos, says that 2026 is the “year of expansion”. The official reiterated that Montenegro, Albania, Moldova, and Ukraine remain the main candidate countries.
The official reported to France24 that Montenegro is leading and could conclude technical negotiations and become an EU member country by 2028, writes Mediafax. At the same time, the Commissioner reiterated that Moldova is making “increasingly better progress”.
“When I say that this is the year of expansion, I am referring to the fact that, in the nine months of this year, we have opened and closed more chapters than in any other year in the last 25 years,” said Kos.
Speaking about Moldova, the European Commissioner mentioned that the country is “the best student in the class,” considering that it started the process much later than the candidate countries from the Balkans.
Regarding the Balkan states, Marta Kos acknowledged that the implementation of reforms is uneven there, and for this reason, the EU could decide to redirect 330 million euros from European funds from the countries with the weakest results.
“Montenegro, for example, has so far a reform implementation rate of 91%. But we also have Bosnia and Herzegovina with a rate of zero, because their politicians are not capable of ratifying two important agreements that would allow us to pay the money. You know, the European Union is not a charity organization. Therefore, in order to help their economies and societies develop, they need to implement the reforms, and we only provide the money if they do this,” explained Marta Kos.