Published on
Montenegro’s ambassador to the European Union has told Euronews his country will support new safeguards for new member states, but only if they rest on objective criteria and do not create an effective second class of membership.
ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT
Montenegro is currently the most advanced candidate country in the accession process, aiming to become the 28th EU member state in 2028. But its bid has recently been complicated by a string of proposals to overhaul how enlargement works.
Chief among them: five of the six EU founding members have called for stronger safeguards against democratic rollback after accession – a lesson drawn from Viktor Orbán’s tenure as prime minister of Hungary.
Petar Marković, Montenegro’s head of mission to the EU, told Euronews his country supports tougher safeguards, noting that Podgorica already outperforms certain other EU capitals on rule-of-law measures according to the European Commission’s periodic review.
“Montenegro has an interest in introducing guarantees meant to maintain EU standards. But the potential breaches would have to be assessed on a case-by-case basis against objective criteria to prove systematic backsliding,” he said.
Marković argued the criteria must be agreed before membership begins, and cannot be used to pre-emptively curtail a new member’s voting rights through a transitional period – a move he called politically and legally dubious, warning it would effectively relegate a newly joined state to second-class membership.
At the same time, the ambassador acknowledged that one of Montenegro’s main incentives for accepting new safeguards is that they could smooth the ratification process, particularly as the political spectrum in some founding member states shifts rightward and grows more sceptical of enlargement.
Changing the rules
Another proposal on the table is “gradual integration“, a framework pushed by France and Germany under which candidate countries would reap early benefits of EU membership as they advance through the accession process.
“For far too long, there has not been a real discussion on the enlargement methodology,” Marković said, welcoming the return of enlargement as a top political priority in European capitals.
But he argued that after 14 years of intensive work in the accession process, it would be unfair to change the rules this late – especially since Montenegro was the first country to accept the current methodology.
“This is not about what we deserve. This is a rational choice. Discussions on a new methodology should focus on the candidate countries for which the current methodology has not worked. For Montenegro, it clearly has,” Marković added.
“Strategically, the stakes could not be higher. The EU has a real chance to reverse the Brexit trend and return to expanding again.”