Montenegro will provisionally close two more chapters of its European Union accession negotiations — Chapter 1, on the free movement of goods, and Chapter 12, on food safety, veterinary and phytosanitary policy — at an intergovernmental conference with the EU on Friday 6 November, Minister for European Affairs Maida Gorcevic announced in parliament on Thursday 5 November.

Source: Beta News Agency via Beta Briefing

Gorcevic told MPs during question time that she had received confirmation from Brussels that the two chapters to be closed were Chapters 1 and 12. "I believe that, when we speak about the successes of this government and the whole of Montenegro, we can say that they are lining up," she said, according to the Beta agency report.

Source: Beta News Agency via Beta Briefing

The announcement is the next concrete step after the European Commission adopted its 2026 enlargement package on 4 November with roadmaps for Montenegro and the other frontrunners — a development Awaaz Punjab reported yesterday. Where that package set the indicative timetable, Thursday's confirmation from Brussels, relayed by Gorcevic, names the actual chapters and the actual conference date.

Source: Beta News Agency via Beta Briefing

Thursday's chapter confirmation follows the Commission's enlargement package and roadmaps published a day earlier. Read: EU Adopts 2026 Enlargement Package with Montenegro Roadmap

Chapter 1 was already agreed by all 27

For Chapter 1, the groundwork was announced earlier in the week: Ireland's Minister for European Affairs Thomas Byrne, speaking for the Irish Presidency of the Council of the EU, confirmed that all EU member states had agreed to provisionally close Chapter 1 and that he would chair the 6 November intergovernmental conference to formalise it, Agence Europe reported.

Source: Agence Europe

Gorcevic said that by the end of October Montenegro had fulfilled all the obligations needed for the provisional closing of the remaining chapters and had delivered its negotiating positions to the European Commission and the Council of the EU. She credited the current government with changing the course of European integration in less than three years — in her account, from years of stalling to the final phase of negotiations and preparation of the accession treaty.

Source: Beta News Agency via Beta Briefing

The road from here to 2028

According to the European Commission's indicative schedule, which Radio Free Europe has seen, the remaining chapters after Friday are slated for two further intergovernmental conferences in November and December 2026, covering areas including energy, transport, taxation, financial services, environment and the rule-of-law chapters. The same schedule has the draft accession treaty finished in spring 2027 and signed in June 2027, Srpske reported.

Source: Srpske Novine (citing Radio Free Europe)

Chapter closures are provisional by design: under the negotiating rules, nothing is finally agreed until everything is agreed, and all chapters can in principle be revisited before the treaty. Montenegro's stated goal remains to complete the negotiations by the end of this year, sign the accession contract during 2027 and become an EU member in 2028 as the bloc's 28th member — the '28 by 28' ambition its ministers repeated at this week's Euronews enlargement summit in Brussels, where Gorcevic also rejected any form of second-class membership.

Source: Srpske Novine (citing Radio Free Europe)

What happens next

The intergovernmental conference on Friday 6 November formalises the two closures. After that, attention shifts to the November and December conferences that would close the remaining ten chapters, and to whether member states — including Croatia, which has circulated its own list of bilateral issues it wants resolved — keep the end-of-year timetable intact.