The EU’s plan to stop new members from becoming Hungary 2.0

BRUSSELS — When it comes to letting new members into the EU, the European Commission has one main priority: making sure no hopeful turns into the next Hungary.

To achieve that, the plan is to use Montenegro, which is close to completing its membership negotiations, as a guinea pig.

Montenegrin President Jakov Milatović told POLITICO he was discussing what this would look like with the EU and member countries, including during a recent visit to Ireland, which will hold the presidency of the Council of the EU in the second half of this year.

The Commission wants to put “long-term safeguards” in Montenegro’s accession treaty to ensure the bloc can respond if the small Balkan country backslides on democracy or rule of law, a Commission official told POLITICO. The official was granted anonymity to speak about sensitive negotiations, as were others quoted in this piece.

This “will be the accession treaty defining future accession treaties,” the EU official said. Montenegro is not the only country jostling join the EU; Ukraine has been pushing for EU membership in 2027 to be included in a peace deal with the Kremlin, and Iceland is to hold a referendum on restarting EU membership talks.

But Milatović said that “nobody really knows” what the text will ultimately look like. Podgorica is waiting for the Commission to provide more information, he added.

The debate in the Commission’s Berlaymont headquarters is about what “the lessons we have learned from the 2004 enlargement” are, the Commission official said, referring to when Hungary, Slovakia and eight other countries joined the bloc. “Does our Union have the ability to respond to backwards steps? Not really.”

Hungary has proven to be something of a cautionary tale for the EU. Budapest under Viktor Orbán has been a thorn in the bloc’s side and last month blocked the EU’s 20th round of sanctions against Russia and a €90 billion lifeline for Kyiv.

The Commission’s priority now is to ensure Montenegro and other new joiners don’t turn into Hungary 2.0. Montenegro’s accession treaty — effectively the rules under which countries join the EU — will be drafted by a working group organized by the Cypriot Council presidency, with input from all EU member countries.

A spokesperson for the Cypriot presidency declined to say when the working group would be formed. But the Commission official told POLITICO it would be within “weeks” and two European diplomats confirmed it was expected this month.

Enlargement Commissioner Marta Kos told POLITICO the Commission “is currently in the final phase of preparing a draft treaty,” without giving a timeline.

The lone holdout is France, one of the diplomats said. Paris is refusing to greenlight drafting the accession treaty and is taking an ultra-cautious approach to EU enlargement ahead of presidential elections in 2027, another senior EU diplomat told POLITICO.

“Everyone is trying to persuade France to be okay with it,” a third diplomat said.

A French diplomat called suggestions it opposed drafting Montenegro’s treaty “non-sense,” adding Paris simply wanted to see a “merit-based accession process.”

“France has always supported the accession process of Montenegro and has developed with the Montenegrin authorities a very fruitful cooperation in this context,” the diplomat insisted. “It has never expressed any opposition to the drafting of the accession treaty.”

The veto question

There’s little clarity on what form the EU’s safeguards will take.

“There are some ideas flying around but no one has come up with an actual proposal,” a European diplomat involved in the discussions told POLITICO.

Some of the early suggestions include suspending veto rights if Montenegro and other new joiners violate fundamental EU values, especially the rule of law, the diplomat said. Another topic of discussion behind the scenes is how long the safeguards should remain in place.

There were safeguard clauses in place for the countries that joined in 2004, on topics such as failure to implement internal market rules, but they could only be activated for three years after accession and were not very robust, the diplomat said.

The only red line for Montenegro is limitations on its voting rights, a Montenegrin official told POLITICO. Podgorica is fine if the EU imposes other safeguards on it but it would not want to give up its voice at the decision-making table.

A dinner in Brussels on Wednesday between EU ambassadors and Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s chief of staff, Bjoern Seibert, saw them discuss enlargement. However, a Commission proposal to speed up membership for candidate countries via a process dubbed “reverse enlargement” — granting EU membership with limited privileges and voting rights — was forcefully rejected, according to three EU diplomats.

Domestic strife

All of this is contingent on Montenegro meeting its ambitious target to become the 28th member of the bloc by 2028. To do that, it has to pass a lot of laws to align with the EU rulebook.

But the lightning-fast pace of reforms is causing some internal political strife. Last month, the Montenegrin president criticized MPs for waving laws through without properly reading or debating them, initially refusing to sign them before relenting.

“It’s not the European standard that you basically just sort of raise your hand [and] get the salary,” Milatović told POLITICO, adding that even if the legislation was required to join the EU, lawmakers should still do their due diligence.

“It’s true that Montenegro is effectively outsourcing its democracy to Brussels,” said another European diplomat. “But it has no choice if it wants to join the EU by 2028.”

Despite the pace at which Montenegro is moving, whether it can join by 2028 is a big question mark. Podgorica has 20 of 33 accession chapters left to close and is set to close its next one — Chapter 21, on Trans-European Networks— in March, a Montenegrin official said.

Another four are expected to be closed in June. That would give it six months to achieve its goal of closing the remaining 15 chapters by the end of 2026, at which point all 27 current EU countries — including Hungary — would need to ratify its membership, a lengthy process in itself.

The Commission official affirmed Montenegro’s ambitious membership target is “technically possible,” especially with Podgorica’s firm commitment. “But there is politics and then there is life,” the official said.

Milatović agreed that the task ahead is a big one. “It’s not that easy to finish 20 chapters in the next less than 10 months,” the Montenegrin president said. “And this is where we really need to work even more than what is being done now.”

Nick Vinocur contributed to this report. This story has been updated.