Analysis | Enlargement fatigue & waiting room fatigue: Montenegro’s foreign minister on the future of EU enlargement.
Foreign Minister of Montenegro Dr. Filip Ivanović talks to Georgetown University about European enlargement and Montenegro as a potential EU expansion success story.
On January 30, Montenegrin foreign minister Dr. Filip Ivanović joined Georgetown faculty and students for A Conversation on European Union Enlargement and Montenegro. His first trip to the United States as Foreign Minister in a newly-minted centrist government, Minister Ivanović has his work cut out for him. His political party–Europe Now!–which he helped co-found just two years ago, has thrown its political capital fully behind the Montenegrin ambition of finally acceding to the European Union, a goal of successive Montenegrin governments dating back to 2012. Minister Ivanović’s talk illuminated the hopes and roadblocks faced by several Eastern European and Balkan countries all knocking on the EU’s door, and he spoke candidly when peppered with questions from students about his government’s aspirations, the pace of EU integration in light of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and even on broader questions of Balkan history and identity.
Montenegro’s European aspirations
Minister Ivanović drew on various sources to explain the central aspiration of the Montenegrin government: EU membership. For starters, it is highly popular in his country, with polls indicating over 80% favoring membership, which, according to Minister Ivanonić, reflects both a deeply-held sense of historical identity as well as the more pragmatic security and socio-economic benefits associated with EU membership.
For Montenegro’s 600,000 citizens, Minister Ivanonić contended, EU membership means many different things. For farmers, it means a generous and well-funded agricultural subsidy regime in the form of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP); for scientists, it means access to the EU’s €100 billion Horizons research funding; for aspiring professionals, it means the harmonization of industry credentials allowing for greater economic mobility; for students and other young people, it represents the chance to travel, learn, and live freely across a vast and diverse continent; and for civil society, EU membership would reflect and reinforce the democratic modernization efforts the country has undertaken since it began negotiating its accession to the bloc in 2012. All this “adds up”–Minister Ivanonić explained–to the substantial majority of Montenegrins who favor membership and who swept his new political party to power against long-time incumbent Milo Đukanović.
The long shadow of Balkan history
The coalition-based support for EU membership, continued Ivanonić, reflects another aspect of his country’s political identity as fundamentally a multi-national and (small “L”) liberal state. Being married to any ethnic, religious, or historical form of nationalism simply would not work for a country as diverse as Montenegro — with substantial Serb, Bosnian, Albanian, Croat, and Muslim minority presence. Hence, joining an international club whose resistance to harmful forms of nationalism is one of its founding principles is a natural step forward.
As part of the former Yugoslav Republic, Montenegro has experienced a recent history of extreme sectarianism, nationalism, and communism. Although NATO forcibly subjugated Serbian President Milosevic in 1999, sectarianism still permeates much of the region’s politics, including in Montenegro. Even now, pro-Serb factions hope for a rejection of Montenegro’s close ties to the West, its membership in NATO, and its alignment with international sanctions regimes imposed on Russia. However, without delving into the region’s history, Minister Ivanonić emphatically stated that Montenegrin nationhood was a civic kind of nationhood — one that could sustain itself on the rights and freedoms enshrined in European Union law and political culture, not on any ethno-religious basis.
Russia looms large: a new strategic calculus
One elephant in the room–one Minister Ivanonić addressed head-on when explaining Montenegro’s European ambitions–was Russia. The invasion of Ukraine in 2022 cemented in the minds of many former Soviet and Yugoslav policymakers that throwing in their lot with Europe was the right path forward for their nations.
For Montenegro, which joined NATO formally in 2017, the Ukraine war presents not only a renewed sense of strategic imperative but also a new opportunity. EU enlargement policy has long been characterized as “enlargement fatigue” for over a decade, referring to EU member states’ reluctance to expand the bloc with the same zeal under which it swiftly admitted large parts of the former Soviet bloc in the 2000s, and Croatia in 2013. According to Minister Ivanonić, the invasion of Ukraine has provided a much-needed political fuel injection that has the power to end enlargement fatigue in both EU Commission bureaucracies and member-state governments alike.
Montenegro: a model for EU enlargement?
Considering the Montenegrin people’s aspirations, and favorable politics in the European Commission and across the continent, Minister Ivanonić and his government are confident that the country can pull off the closure of the remaining 30+ chapters in the EU accession treaties, something they promise to do by 2028 when the current parliamentary term expires.
The EU would also stand to benefit from Montenegro’s accession, Minister Ivanonić pointed out. Admitting its first new member in over ten years would demonstrate that the EU’s enlargement policy is still active and that aspiring states on Europe’s periphery have reason to undertake the painstaking reform and development efforts required to satisfy the bloc’s entry criteria. Frustration among candidate countries, especially Turkey, has grown into “waiting room” fatigue, which could become a serious reputational problem for the bloc if nations perceive that their aspirations or efforts to satisfy entry requirements are going unrewarded.
As many Eastern European and Balkan states continue to demonstrate interest in joining the EU–an interest accelerated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine–Montenegro’s journey is well poised to be a success story. Minister Ivanonić agrees, but affirms there are no easy solutions and that fundamentally good governance must come first. He clarified wryly that joining the EU requires “a lot of people, and you need to pay them well,” referring to the sheer scale of his country’s negotiation and compliance effort. The truth is that not all states are in a position to do this, rendering EU accession still relatively inaccessible–and slow–for smaller states on Europe’s periphery. That being said, Montenegro’s pending success will certainly breathe new life into EU enlargement, confirming for countries in the Western Balkans and Eastern Europe that accession is attainable when political conditions at home and in Europe align favorably.
Freddie Mallinson is the Assistant Director of Programs and Research at the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy and a graduate of Georgetown University’s Security Studies Program (SSP).
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