“Important for us, why we want to join the EU, it’s clear the common values that we all believe in, and secondly, it’s a single market, it’s half a billion people against half a million Montenegrins,” Spajić said. “And the third thing is the project of peace, maybe even the last project of peace in the world these days, so this is the value of the European Union.”
Across Europe, non-EU countries from Iceland to Moldova have done just that it increasingly showed interest in joining the camp for protection and security rather than trade and economic benefits following Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine and Donald Trump’s threats to annex Greenland.
Montenegro is the most advanced candidate country in the accession negotiations, having closed 14 out of 33 negotiation chapters, the criteria required to join the EU. But some member states are skeptical about adding new members and first want to reform the decision-making process of the community.
Spajić said Podgorica, which has set an ambitious goal of joining the EU by 2028, was “80, 90 percent” when it came to closing the remaining chapters and was “very confident” of doing so by the end of 2026.
“Some of the things we’re doing now, the reforms we’re making, are unprecedented,” he said.
By joining the EU, Montenegro will “give hope to the Western Balkans” as well as “preserve enlargement as a very powerful tool of the European Union,” Spajić said.
