EU member states and Montenegro have provisionally closed two more parts of the country’s EU accession talks, covering competition policy and the customs union.
The decision was taken at the 28th meeting of the Accession Conference with Montenegro, the body that formally oversees negotiations between the EU and a candidate country, the Council of the EU announced on Tuesday.
Competition policy sets rules intended to prevent anti-competitive behaviour such as cartels and the abuse of market power, while the customs union refers to applying common rules on tariffs and customs procedures at the EU’s external borders.
It is the second such step in under a month, after an accession conference on 15 June 2026 provisionally closed talks on the free movement of workers and on health and consumer protection.
Montenegro has opened all 33 negotiating chapters in its accession negotiations, and 18 have now been provisionally closed.
What “provisional closure” means
The EU can return to chapters that have been provisionally closed “if necessary” at an appropriate moment, the Council said.
It also stated that agreements reached on individual chapters are not considered final until an overall agreement has been reached across all chapters, and that monitoring will continue of Montenegro’s alignment with and implementation of the EU acquis — the accumulated body of EU law — throughout the negotiations.
Ireland’s Minister of State for European affairs and defence, Thomas Byrne, led the EU delegation on behalf of the Irish presidency of the Council of the EU, with the participation of Enlargement Commissioner Marta Kos.
Montenegro was represented by its Prime Minister, Milojko Spajić.
