The European Commission's plan for a wider EU gives roadmaps to four frontrunners, while offering piecemeal access to EU policies for candidate countries Bosnia & Herzegovina, Georgia, North Macedonia, Serbia and Turkey, and potential candidate Kosovo. 

The communication, "Preparing for a wider Union", published on October 6, says the Commission will present indicative roadmaps for Albania, Moldova, Montenegro and Ukraine in its 2026 enlargement package, "provided they maintain reform momentum". For everyone else the main offer is a more structured version of "gradual integration", earlier participation in selected EU policies that would remain "merit-based, conditional and reversible" and depend on "policy readiness and strategic alignment", backed by annual dialogues with each enlargement partner to track progress.

The package risks formalising a two-speed queue. The four frontrunners, including Ukraine, have reformed fast and, in the Western Balkan cases, have few quarrels with their neighbours. The six left behind are held back by Kosovo's unresolved statehood dispute, a dysfunctional political system in Bosnia, a bilateral veto over North Macedonia, and democratic backsliding in Serbia, Georgia and Turkey.

"Focusing on the countries facing fewest obstacles to accession might suit the geopolitical needs of the moment, but it risks losing sight of the original regional dimension of Western Balkans enlargement," Milica Delevic of the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) wrote in a commentary on September 11, arguing that Brussels had gone for "low-hanging fruit".

Two procedural proposals may matter more to the laggards than to the leaders. The Commission wants qualified majority voting instead of unanimity for opening negotiating clusters and other intermediate steps in accession talks, which would make it harder for a single member state to freeze a candidate in place. It also suggests that a new member could commit, for a limited period, not to block future enlargements over bilateral disputes. Both would need the agreement of the existing 27, and neither would lift a veto that a current member already holds.

"Our assessment shows that the EU can accommodate a larger membership. But there are areas where we see challenges we need to address," Enlargement Commissioner Marta Kos said on October 6, pointing first to "the rule of law and sincere cooperation".

The price of early access is also rising. A draft of the review reported by Politico in late September said candidates would have to cooperate on sanctions implementation, export controls and investment screening as they integrate, and that access "should be suspended or withdrawn where warranted". That condition bites hardest on Serbia, which has never imposed sanctions on Russia, and on Georgia. The Commission's annual Rule of Law Report, now covering only the most advanced candidates, will be extended to the others "as and when they are ready".

Serbia

Serbia has been a candidate since March 2012 and opened accession talks in January 2014, but it has opened only 22 of the 35 negotiating chapters and provisionally closed two. A Commission attempt to open cluster 3, on competitiveness and inclusive growth, stalled in July when the Netherlands was prepared to block it over Belgrade's democratic record, judicial independence and ties with Moscow. "We do not want to see Serbia fall behind," Kos told MEPs at the time.

Earlier in the year Brussels froze payments to Serbia under the Western Balkans Growth Plan after parliament passed judicial laws that the Venice Commission said weakened prosecutorial independence. Belgrade amended the laws on June 25. Relations soured again in September, when Serbia gave convicted war criminal Ratko Mladic a funeral with state honours and Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic said Serbia would not advance towards membership while its officials honoured him.

Domestic politics is in flux. Aleksandar Vucic resigned as president on September 27 to run for prime minister in a snap parliamentary election on October 25, in which a student-backed list born out of nearly two years of anti-government protests is his main challenger. The Vucic-led list was on 48.6% against 37.1% for the students in a Faktor Plus poll published on September 21. 

Energy ties with Russia complicate the situation further. Oil company NIS, majority-owned by Gazprom Neft and Gazprom, is under US sanctions and operates on temporary US licences, the latest running to October 30, while Hungary's MOL negotiates to buy the Russian stake. Belgrade has also extended its gas supply deal with Moscow to the end of the year.

Coverage of the new EU approach has mainly been in opposition and independent media, focusing on Serbia being left out of the European Commission’s roadmap for the four most advanced candidates.

Marinika Tepić of the pro-EU coalition, European Serbia, said on October 6 that the government had “lost its European compass”, calling Serbia’s exclusion another clear confirmation of how far behind the country is on the European path, N1 reported. Analyst Helena Ivanov similarly said the decision showed that Serbia’s EU path is not moving forward, as reported by Insajder TV. 

Kos said on October 7 that Serbia would have to “deliver more” and that the Commission would assess the seriousness of the future government after the elections, particularly on alignment with EU foreign and security policy, reported Danas.

North Macedonia

North Macedonia has been a candidate since December 2005, longer than anyone else in the Western Balkans, and held its first intergovernmental conference in July 2022. Screening ended in December 2023. It cannot open the fundamentals cluster until it amends its constitution to recognise Bulgarians as one of its peoples, a condition Sofia secured in the 2022 French-brokered compromise and wrote into the EU's negotiating framework.

Prime Minister Hristijan Mickoski refuses to make the change without guarantees that no new conditions will follow. In Washington on September 17 he proposed adopting the amendments at once but delaying their entry into force until talks were finished and every member state had ratified the accession treaty. "We have changed the flag, the Constitution, the constitutional name several times in the past, and the message has always been: Do this and this is the last," he said.

Brussels has not budged. "EU enlargement is not built on guarantees that are given in advance," Kos said in Skopje on July 8. Von der Leyen, ending her regional tour there on October 2, said "North Macedonia belongs with us in the EU. There is one key step you need to take to move forward," while praising the country for making the Growth Plan "a real success", European Western Balkans reported. Public opinion offers Mickoski little room: only 24% of citizens backed the constitutional changes in a survey published in January, against 71% support for membership.

The Commission's proposal on bilateral disputes was written with Skopje's experience in mind, first with Greece over its name and then with Bulgaria. It would bind only future members, however, and does nothing about a veto Bulgaria already holds. Rumen Radev's election victory in Bulgaria in April offered no relief.

Responding to the latest proposals, Mickoski said the EU had recognised the problem of member states using their veto power to raise issues he considers unrelated to European criteria and values, Sloboden Pecat reported on October 7.

Regarding gradual integration, he said North Macedonia would need to meet three conditions: country-specific reforms, alignment with the EU’s common foreign and security policy, and reforms to its public procurement system.

According to Mickoski, North Macedonia already meets two of the three requirements. He said the government was awaiting the European Commission’s specific requirements for the remaining condition.

Mickoski said he had raised the issue in meetings with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and French President Emmanuel Macron in Tivat, adding that the enlargement reform appeared aimed at limiting the use of bilateral issues as an accession tool.

Bosnia 

Bosnia became a candidate in December 2022, and EU leaders decided in March 2024 to open accession talks. Two and a half years later the negotiating framework has still not been adopted, because Sarajevo has not completed the steps the Commission set out in October 2022, including laws on the courts and the High Judicial and Prosecutorial Council.

The EU's envoy, Luigi Soreca, called the March 2024 decision "yet another missed opportunity" on its second anniversary. Bosnia is the only Western Balkan country that has not received money from the Growth Plan's Reform and Growth Facility, and in August Soreca warned that the risk of losing an additional €373mn by the end of the year was "concrete". On October 2 he confirmed that Bosnia would not get a roadmap, saying it "remains further away from EU membership than we, or the majority of BiH citizens would like".

The October 4 general election is unlikely to change that. Ethnic parties tightened their hold, with the nationalist SNSD keeping the Serb seat in the tripartite presidency and the Croat HDZ BiH winning the Croat seat, on a record low turnout of about 42%, Brussels Signal reported, citing preliminary results. Days before the vote, former Republika Srpska president Milorad Dodik and the entity's prime minister, Savo Minic, met Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow. "We also feel the pressure from Brussels, but our policies remain the same," Dodik said.

The international oversight that once pushed reforms through is also weaker. High Representative Christian Schmidt stepped down at the end of June, and the Peace Implementation Council has failed to agree on a successor amid a split between the US and the Europeans. For a country that has not unlocked the Growth Plan, conditional access to parts of the single market is a distant prospect.

Kosovo

Kosovo applied for membership in December 2022 but is still only a potential candidate. Five member states, Spain, Slovakia, Cyprus, Romania and Greece, do not recognise its independence, and since enlargement decisions require unanimity it cannot become a candidate or open talks. Normalisation with Serbia under the EU-facilitated dialogue is also unfinished.

Relations with Brussels have improved this year. The Commission lifted the financial measures imposed in 2023 over tensions in the Serb-majority north, but political paralysis after repeated elections cost Kosovo €60mn in Growth Plan funding in June. Lawmakers finally elected Justina Shiroka-Pula president with 81 votes late on October 6, averting what would have been the fourth snap parliamentary election in less than two years, Prishtina Insight reported.

In Pristina on October 1, von der Leyen said Kosovo could receive up to €882mn under the Growth Plan, of which €62mn has been paid in pre-financing, and offered talks on cutting roaming charges and a route into the Single Euro Payments Area. "Institutional stability is the foundation for everything else," she said. Prime Minister Albin Kurti replied that Kosovo was fully aligned with the EU's foreign and security policy and that it "deserves the status of a candidate country".

Kurti has welcomed gradual integration, with a caveat. "It must be a pathway to full EU membership, not a parallel process or a substitute for it," he told Politico. Without a change of position in the five non-recognising capitals, piecemeal integration is the only track open to Kosovo.

Georgia

Georgia applied in March 2022 and became a candidate in December 2023, only for EU leaders to conclude in June 2024 that the government's actions were de facto halting the process. The ruling Georgian Dream party then suspended accession talks itself until 2028. In its 2025 enlargement report the Commission called Georgia a candidate "in name only".

Contact has dwindled. No political dialogue took place between the EU and Georgia in 2025, the EU's annual human rights report said in August, citing "significant democratic backsliding". Brussels has suspended visa-free travel for holders of Georgian diplomatic passports and stopped aid that benefits the authorities directly, while contracting €24mn for civil society and independent media. A visa dialogue meeting in June was described by an EU official as "rather fruitless", and member states are due to vote in January 2027 on suspending visa-free travel for all Georgians, a decision that needs only a qualified majority.

When Kos listed the frontrunners in August she did not mention Georgia at all, prompting opposition politician Grigol Gegelia to say the country was "no longer part" of the enlargement agenda. Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze has likened EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas to Russia. With alignment now a condition for early access to EU policies, the package gives Tbilisi nothing it is likely to take up.

Turkey

Turkey applied in 1987 and has been a candidate since 1999, and its customs union with the EU dates from 1995. Accession talks have been frozen since 2018, and the European Parliament concluded in 2025 that they cannot resume after the jailing of Istanbul mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's main challenger, whose trial continues.

The relationship now runs on trade and security. Kos and Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan agreed in Ankara in February to work towards modernising the customs union, and Fidan said in April that an upgrade could lift annual trade from about $250bn to $500bn. "There is no political will within the European Union," he said, Politis reported, accusing a small member state, an apparent reference to Cyprus, of blocking progress.

Von der Leyen did not help in April when she warned that Europe must not fall "under Russian, Turkish, or Chinese influence", a remark her spokesperson walked back. By July, she and European Council President Antonio Costa were calling the EU and Turkey "strategic partners" at a dinner with Erdogan on the sidelines of the Nato summit in Ankara. Athens says Turkey cannot join the EU's SAFE defence procurement scheme while it maintains its casus belli against Greece, Orthodox Times reported in July, citing diplomatic sources.

Defence is one of the sectors the Commission has earmarked for deeper gradual integration, alongside energy, transport and digital, and it is where Ankara most wants a seat. Access would still be conditional and reversible, and decisions on Turkey are still taken by unanimity, which gives Greece and Cyprus a say.

Next stop, the summit

EU leaders will discuss the package at their summit in Brussels on October 15-16, and the Commission is due to adopt its 2026 enlargement package with individual country reports on October 28, EUobserver reported. Kos has said other candidates could join the front group "if they show the same determination to deliver on their commitments and build trust". For most of the six, the obstacles lie in national capitals: in Belgrade's and Tbilisi's politics, in Sofia's veto and in five governments' refusal to recognise Kosovo.

Contributions from Valentina Dimitrievska in Skopje and Tatyana Kekic in Belgrade.