Albania and the European Union have provisionally closed three parts of Albania’s membership negotiations — covering science and research, education and culture, and external relations — after the latest meeting of the Accession Conference with Albania.
The meeting was the ninth of its kind and marked the first time any negotiating chapters have been provisionally closed in Albania’s accession talks, the Council of the EU announced Tuesday night.
Thomas Byrne, Ireland’s Minister of State for European affairs and defence, said Albania had begun closing chapters after meeting rule of law benchmarks in May, adding that he encouraged the country to continue work on “core reforms.”
The previous Accession Conference, held on 26 May 2026, confirmed that Albania met interim benchmarks for Cluster 1 — known as “Fundamentals” — which covers areas including democratic institutions, public administration reform, rule of law chapters and economic criteria.
What “provisionally closed” means
A chapter being provisionally closed means talks on that area can be considered complete for now, but nothing is final until there is an overall agreement across all negotiating chapters, the Council of the EU noted.
Albania has opened all 33 negotiating chapters in its accession negotiations.
Under the EU’s revised enlargement methodology introduced in 2020, the negotiating chapters are grouped into six thematic clusters, with the “Fundamentals” cluster opened first and closed last.
