“The key for us, why we want to join the EU, is obviously common values that we all believe in, and secondly, it’s the single market, it’s half a billion people versus half a million Montenegrins,” Spajić said. “And the third thing is it’s a peace project, maybe even the last peace project on Earth now these days, so this is the value of the European Union.”
Across Europe, non-EU countries from Iceland to Moldova have increasingly expressed interest in joining the bloc for security and safety rather than simply trade and economic benefits following Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine and Donald Trump’s threats to seize Greenland.
Montenegro is by far the most advanced candidate country in accession negotiations, having closed 14 of 33 negotiating chapters, the criteria required to join the EU. But some member countries are skeptical about adding new members and first want to reform the bloc’s decision-making process.
Spajić said Podgorica, which has set an ambitious target of joining the EU by 2028, was “80, 90 percent there” when it comes to closing the remaining chapters and was “very confident” of doing so by the end of 2026.
“Some of the things that we are doing now, the reforms we are doing, they are absolutely unprecedented,” he said.
By joining the EU, Montenegro would “give hope to the Western Balkans” along with “preserving enlargement as a very, very strong tool of the European Union,” Spajić argued.