The European Commission has not planned a roadmap for Serbia as part of its path toward membership in the European Union.
At the end of October, the European institution will publish roadmaps for Montenegro, Albania, Ukraine and Moldova, which are considered the countries making the most visible progress in the enlargement process.
This move officially confirms that Belgrade no longer enjoys its former position as one of the leading countries on the path toward European integration.
European Commissioner for Enlargement Marta Kos said Serbia would have to meet additional conditions. She added that after the elections, it would become clear whether the Serbian government was genuinely committed to membership or was merely repeating this goal without taking concrete steps.
Speaking before the European Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee, Kos stressed that this applied especially to strategic alignment and compliance with the EU’s common foreign and security policy.
According to Strahinja Subotiq of the Belgrade-based nongovernmental organization European Policy Centre, the absence of a roadmap for Serbia is a strong warning signal and proof that the country is experiencing stagnation in its European integration.
He underscored that this stagnation is no longer evident only from the fact that Serbia has not opened a single negotiating cluster for years and has been unable to benefit from the Growth Plan funds.
“Essentially, we are now being sent the message that we could also lose the many benefits linked to gradual EU membership,” Subotiq said.
These roadmaps will be part of the enlargement package that the European Commission intends to adopt on October 28.
Since December 2021, Serbia has not opened a single negotiating cluster in its talks with the EU.
This week, Marta Kos presented the European Commission’s new proposal on the rules that will apply to future members of the bloc.
Explaining why only four states were included in the roadmaps, she said the documents made sense only for countries making genuine progress in the membership process.
“I would compare it to a car. If the car does not work, there is no point pushing it from behind when the engine is not running. And the engine can run only if there is fuel, while the fuel is domestic reform,” she said.
Corina Stratulat of the European Policy Centre (EPC) said Serbia’s exclusion from the roadmaps sent a message to candidate countries: a leading position in European integration must be earned and maintained.
According to her, the EU should base this decision on clear criteria concerning democratic reforms, the rule of law and foreign-policy alignment, and clearly indicate what Serbia must do to ease the stagnation. She added that the EU itself needed a roadmap for its preparations, because reforms in candidate countries alone were not enough to achieve enlargement.
Serbia’s European path has been effectively blocked since December 2021, when negotiating cluster 4 was opened, the last one for Belgrade in the accession negotiations.
That negotiating cluster covers the green agenda and sustainable connectivity, and it was opened at the height of protests against Rio Tinto’s lithium extraction project.
The stagnation was initially caused by Serbia’s foreign policy misalignment with the EU sanctions against Russia, imposed after the start of Russia’s aggression in Ukraine in February 2022, just two months after the opening of the last negotiating cluster.
In addition, the rule of law has deteriorated, making it even more difficult for Serbia to emerge from its years-long stagnation in European integration.
Subotiq believes that with this approach, Serbia risks remaining at the bottom of the line of countries aspiring to join the EU.
“And remaining stuck in a kind of isolated Balkans, especially if countries such as Montenegro and Albania continue working as they have so far and manage to join the EU in the foreseeable future,” he said.
How did Serbia lose ground to the other candidate countries?
When Serbia opened its last negotiating cluster in December 2021, Montenegro had provisionally closed only three negotiating chapters.
Today, Podgorica is close to completing the talks and has prospects of signing the Accession Treaty next summer.
Albania, which now ranks second among the leading countries in the enlargement process, had not yet received a decision to open negotiations in December 2021.
Accession talks with Albania opened in July 2022.
Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama during the 9th Albania–European Union Intergovernmental Conference, held in Brussels on July 14, 2026.
Meanwhile, in the following years, Ukraine and Moldova also gained candidate-country status and subsequently opened accession negotiations.
All these developments have gradually caused Serbia to lose its position among the leading countries in the European integration process.
Asked how Albania, Ukraine and Moldova managed to overtake Serbia, which was once among the leaders alongside Montenegro, Subotiq said that, according to the European Commission, Serbia still ranked as the second-best-prepared candidate country technically for membership.
“But unlike Serbia, these countries are making good progress in a large number of negotiating chapters. Technical preparedness is no longer necessarily the only factor taken into account; sincere political will to make progress in many chapters is also considered,” he stressed.
He added that through gradual membership, the European Commission was seeking to maintain the pace of progress so that candidate countries, even if they were not technically the most prepared, could reach a higher level of readiness in the foreseeable future.
The most serious recent effort to break Serbia out of its stagnation came in July, when several EU member states assessed that Belgrade should be given the opportunity to open negotiating cluster 3.
This effort was supported by influential countries such as Germany and France, but the necessary consensus was not reached.
Radio Free Europe has learned from reliable sources that from July to September, efforts continued to persuade the other member states to reach unanimity and unblock the process.
According to Radio Free Europe’s diplomatic sources, the countries supporting the advancement of Belgrade’s European path withdrew, at least temporarily, in September, following developments related to the death and burial of convicted war criminal Ratko Mladić.
These developments, together with the snap elections announced for October 25, indicate that there is little likelihood of concrete progress in Serbia’s EU membership process by the end of the year.
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