Montenegro becomes EU candidate

Country joins Croatia, Iceland, Macedonia and Turkey as formal candidate for EU membership.

EU leaders today agreed to make Montenegro a formal candidate for membership of the EU.

At a two-day summit in Brussels that ended today, EU leaders backed a recommendation made by the European Commission last month to grant candidate status to Montenegro. However, no date for the opening of membership talks has been set, a signal that the country, which has a population of just 630,000, needs to speed up reforms.

Montenegro, which gained independence from Serbia only in 2006, becomes the fifth candidate for membership, after Croatia, Iceland, Macedonia and Turkey as an official EU candidate.

Of these countries, only Croatia and Turkey are currently negotiating membership, while Macedonia has been prevented by Greece from starting membership talks for more than five years. Iceland is to begin accession talks in the first half of 2011.

There are expectations that Milo Djukanović, Montenegro’s leader as president or prime minister for most of the past two decades, will step down as prime minister in the coming weeks to make way for Igor Lukšić, Montenegro’s 34-year-old deputy prime minister and finance minister. Lukšić is seen as a committed reformer. It is unclear, however, how much loyalty he commands within the ruling Democratic Party of Socialists (DPS).

Djukanović, whose past business interests have raised concerns at home and abroad, is expected to take up an international position.