A Two-Speed Western Balkans: Montenegro and Albania Lead as EU Enlargement Splits the Region

Montenegro is leading the race. Albania is gaining ground. North Macedonia is stuck before the starting line of its first negotiating cluster. Bosnia and Herzegovina is facing the financial consequences of institutional weakness. Kosovo remains trapped between political paralysis, energy dependence and growing friction with Washington. Serbia, meanwhile, is exploring whether countries dissatisfied with Brussels can build a more coordinated position of their own.

The old idea of the Western Balkans as one accession problem is giving way to something more consequential: a region being sorted into different geopolitical futures.

Montenegro turns accession into a procedure

Montenegro has provisionally closed 15 of the EU’s 33 negotiation chapters, including two more approved on July 9. It is now targeting the conclusion of negotiations by the end of 2026 and membership in 2028.

Those deadlines remain ambitious. But the drafting of an accession treaty gives them a degree of institutional seriousness that previous enlargement promises lacked.

The difference matters. EU accession is often discussed in political language: commitment, perspective, European choice. The actual process is much less sentimental. Candidates must align their laws with the EU acquis across a complex system of chapters and clusters. Each chapter closed represents a specific area in which national rules have been judged sufficiently compatible with the bloc’s standards, with final approval requiring the agreement of all EU member states.

Montenegro has managed to move through that machinery faster than its neighbors.

The country is not being rewarded for belonging to the Western Balkans. It is being rewarded for progress through the accession mechanism.

That distinction is becoming the defining fact of the region.

For years, enlargement was closely tied to the broader strategic goal of stabilizing the post-conflict Balkans. The assumption was that keeping all candidates on a common European track would itself help prevent political backsliding and external influence. The latest developments point toward a harder model. Brussels is increasingly willing to advance those who meet the requirements and leave others behind.

The result is a two-speed Western Balkans.

Albania's breakthrough comes with conditions

Albania has emerged as the second major beneficiary of the new approach. It has closed its first chapters - 25, 26 and 30 - and is now working toward completing negotiations by late 2027.

That timeline was once the kind of target that could easily be dismissed as political optimism. It is now being treated as a realistic prospect.

Albania's advance is particularly significant when placed beside North Macedonia's stagnation. Both countries are part of the same regional accession landscape, yet their trajectories are rapidly diverging. Albania is beginning to accumulate concrete negotiating achievements. North Macedonia has not made sufficient progress since its previous report.

The contrast exposes the practical consequences of political blockages. A country can remain formally committed to European integration while losing years of momentum because a single unresolved issue prevents the process from moving forward.

Albania's progress, however, is not unconditional.

The European Parliament's demand for a moratorium on construction in protected environmental areas, including the Vjosë-Nartë zone, places the government of Prime Minister Edi Rama in a politically uncomfortable position. A major tourism development involving Jared Kushner's Affinity Partners has become entangled with the broader question of how Albania will reconcile foreign investment with European environmental standards.

That dispute is not peripheral to accession.

The protests known as the “Flamingo Revolution”, including a 10,000-strong demonstration in Tirana on June 20, show how European integration can produce domestic political costs even for a country benefiting from the process. Brussels may offer Albania a faster route toward membership, but it is also demanding that the country accept limits on what governments and investors can do with protected land.

This is the less visible side of enlargement. The EU does not simply offer access to a market. It also narrows the space for governments to make unilateral decisions in areas where European rules apply.

The countries that cannot move

North Macedonia's position is perhaps the clearest warning about the cost of stagnation.

Its first thematic cluster remains blocked pending constitutional amendments recognizing Bulgarians as a state-building nation. Until that issue is resolved, the country cannot unlock the next stage of negotiations.

This is the kind of deadlock that can make accession feel detached from economic performance or public support. A country may be broadly oriented toward Europe and still remain immobilized by a constitutional question linked to a bilateral dispute.

For North Macedonia, the consequence is not merely another delayed report. It is the loss of relative position. While Albania moves forward, the gap between the two countries widens.

Bosnia and Herzegovina faces a different form of punishment for institutional weakness. Its placement under increased monitoring by the Financial Action Task Force because of loopholes in anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing systems adds a direct financial dimension to political obstructionism.

Grey-listing does not simply damage a country's reputation. It can lead to enhanced due diligence by financial institutions, slower transaction processing and higher compliance costs for cross-border banking. For a country already suffering from political vetoes and divisive rhetoric, the consequences can accumulate quickly.

Institutional dysfunction becomes an economic liability.

Kosovo's predicament is more geopolitical. Its legislature and government have remained dysfunctional for more than a year, while normalization with Serbia under the Brussels and Ohrid agreements remains a condition of its European path.

The energy dispute with Washington adds another layer.

Kosovo relies overwhelmingly on two aging lignite plants and has spent €735 million on electricity imports over four years. US officials have urged the country to join a regional LNG architecture linking projects such as the Vertical Gas Corridor, the Alexandroupolis-Skopje connection and Croatian LNG infrastructure.

Prime Minister Albin Kurti's government has rejected imported LNG in favor of developing domestic lignite gasification, pointing to reserves of approximately 12.44 billion tons.

The argument is economically understandable. It is also strategically risky.

Kosovo is choosing a domestic energy model over an infrastructure network supported by the United States at a moment when its political institutions are already weak and its international position remains complicated. The disagreement is therefore about more than gas.

It is about whether a small, politically vulnerable state can insist on its own energy strategy when larger partners are trying to shape the region's infrastructure.

Serbia and Georgia offer another route

As Montenegro and Albania move closer to the EU's institutional center, Serbia is looking for room outside Brussels' preferred framework.

Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić's state visit to Georgia produced a free trade agreement, plans to open embassies and reported trade growth of 36.4% in the first quarter of 2026. More important politically, Vučić has announced plans to bring EU candidate countries together in Belgrade to coordinate an alternative posture toward Brussels.

The emerging Serbia-Georgia relationship is not an alternative to EU membership in any formal sense. Neither country has abandoned its European path.

Its purpose is more defensive.

Countries receiving critical assessments from the European Commission have an incentive to avoid facing Brussels entirely on their own. A network of states with similar grievances can provide diplomatic leverage, economic alternatives or simply a political narrative that resists the idea that EU conditionality is the only available measure of progress.

That logic is likely to become more attractive as the accession process becomes more clearly merit-based.

A collective regional strategy once helped countries move toward the EU together. A different kind of collective strategy may now help some of them manage the consequences of falling behind.

The price of a multi-speed Europe

The EU's new approach has an obvious strength: it makes enlargement more credible. If countries that implement reforms are rewarded with actual progress, membership stops being an abstract promise.

But the model also carries a political danger.

The more sharply Brussels differentiates between candidates, the less meaningful the Western Balkans becomes as a single political category. Montenegro and Albania are being pulled into a faster European orbit. North Macedonia is immobilized by a constitutional dispute. Bosnia and Herzegovina is paying a financial price for institutional shortcomings. Kosovo is caught between European conditions and American strategic expectations. Serbia is testing whether dissatisfied candidates can create their own diplomatic space.

The region is not breaking apart in any dramatic sense.

It is simply ceasing to move together.

That change may prove more important than the closure of any individual accession chapter. European integration is becoming a filter that sorts states according to their ability to resolve political disputes, accept regulatory constraints and align their economic choices with broader strategic structures.

Montenegro has accepted that bargain and is now close enough to membership for the treaty itself to be drafted. Albania is moving quickly, even as environmental disputes expose the domestic price of compliance. Others are discovering that delay is not neutral. It creates room for financial penalties, political isolation, energy vulnerability and alternative alliances.

The EU is no longer promising to take the Western Balkans forward as a block.