EU Drafts Roadmaps for Four Candidates, Excludes Serbia

The European Commission is drafting a package of measures that would give Montenegro, Albania, Ukraine and Moldova a clear, accelerated path to European Union membership, while Serbia stays outside this round. According to a report by the Brussels outlet Politico published on September 28, the proposal is being written by Commission experts and will reach senior officials on October 6, in the middle of Serbia’s election campaign.

Politico cites two senior Commission officials working on the draft, as well as the draft document itself, which the outlet reviewed. According to them, the four countries currently rank as frontrunner candidates for accession, yet they still face a slow pace of negotiations and uncertain timelines for formal membership.

The so called targeted roadmaps, as the proposal is being described, would for the first time give these countries a concrete assurance that they will be admitted if they keep up substantive reforms, along with indicative deadlines for wrapping up negotiations. Per the report, the document is expected to include a list of priorities, timelines and concrete outcomes for each country, plus target dates for closing negotiating clusters.

The roadmaps, according to the same report, also create obligations for the EU’s current member states, which must sign off before the process can move forward for each of the four countries. The pace will therefore depend not only on Brussels but on political will in the bloc’s capitals.

Serbia will not receive a roadmap at this stage, placed alongside Georgia and Turkey, whose accession processes have been halted over what are described as concerns about democratic backsliding and the rule of law. Kosovo, North Macedonia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, candidates at an earlier stage of the process, are also left out of this round.

“This is about opening the path toward concluding the accession negotiations. A clear list of priorities will be set out: timelines and concrete outcomes,” a European Commission spokesperson said, according to the Politico report carried by Nova.rs.

The draft is being led by Aleksandar Adam, an advisor to Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. In her State of the Union address in September, she announced targeted support for candidate countries that she said had made the most progress in negotiations. Alongside the roadmaps, the proposal also draws on a broader revision of enlargement policy that would let candidates gradually integrate into certain EU areas even before formal membership, through economic benefits and inclusion in joint projects.

“Enlargement remains a geopolitical imperative. But the accession process takes time,” the European Commission’s draft document on enlargement states.

Von der Leyen and Enlargement Commissioner Marta Kos will also propose changes to how the Union functions, per the same report, including safeguard mechanisms and transition periods for new members meant to stop them from undermining key policies or breaching commitments they have made. Kos said earlier this month that she hopes the proposed changes will bring about what she called an “autumn of enlargement.”

The proposal arrives as current EU member states are approaching further enlargement of the bloc cautiously. EU leaders will discuss enlargement and internal reforms at a summit in Brussels on October 15 and 16, where the Commission will seek political backing to speed up the process. It is not yet clear whether, or how, Serbia’s status in this round will come up at that meeting.

Serbia’s EU accession process has, according to Commission officials, already been on hold for some time for the same reasons cited for Georgia and Turkey, while Belgrade is in the middle of an election campaign. The final version of the roadmap proposal will only be known after the officials’ meeting on October 6, and the broader picture of the EU’s enlargement pace should become clearer at the October summit in Brussels.