By: Mélodie Tran Thuan
When I arrived in Podgorica on Sunday, 31 May 2026, on the eve of the start of my internship at the Centre for Civic Education, one thing immediately struck me: the prominent place the European Union occupies in Montenegrin political life. In the media, in the speeches of political leaders, and in everyday conversations, EU accession is everywhere.
In Podgorica, the EU flag is part of the landscape. Alongside Montenegro’s double-headed eagle, it flies above numerous institutional buildings, as if the country were already part of the European family.
Gradually, a clear impression began to emerge. I remember the taxi driver who picked me up at the airport. As we drove through the Montenegrin capital, he spoke enthusiastically about his country’s accession to the European Union not in the conditional tense, but in the future tense. Not as a possibility, but as a step that would inevitably become reality.
Montenegro has been negotiating its accession to the EU for more than a decade and is now widely regarded as the most advanced candidate country in the enlargement process. In this race toward enlargement, France, my home country, has adopted a cautious position. This reluctance became particularly evident following the major enlargements of 2004 and 2007, which profoundly transformed the EU. The aim is not to oppose enlargement, but to ensure that it is accompanied by a deeper integration of the European project. In the case of Croatia, for instance, France supported its accession process, while at the same time insisting on the importance of institutional and judicial reforms before membership. This approach has earned France a reputation for slowing the process, even though it argues that its primary concern is to avoid a “dilution” of the EU.
Yet in this long and demanding process, one actor is often overlooked: public opinion within the member states. Beyond negotiations and accession chapters, enlargement remains above all a political project; one that must be understood and accepted by European citizens themselves.
An Issue Almost Invisible in the French Public Debate
While consulting the Standard Eurobarometer 105 (Spring 2026), conducted between March and April in the 27 European Union member states and several candidate countries, I noticed that support for enlargement is lower in France than anywhere else in the EU. Only 35% of French respondents support further enlargement, while 54% oppose it. This figure confirms the unease that EU enlargement continues to generate in France.
I could go through the usual explanations: fears of uncontrolled migration, concerns about corruption or criminality often associated with candidate countries or worries about the financial cost for taxpayers. I could link these concerns to France’s economic, social, and political context. But doing so would, in my view, overlook a much more troubling issue.
Since arriving in Montenegro two weeks ago, I have attended several conferences, debates, and meetings where EU enlargement was at the centre of discussions. Only one person openly expressed concern about how citizens in EU member states are informed – or rather, not informed – about the progress of accession negotiations. It was a Moldovan member of parliament speaking at a gathering of parliamentarians, opposition politicians, and civil society representatives from the Western Balkans.
“Has EU enlargement become a taboo subject in these countries?” he asked, with a concerned expression.
I do not know whether enlargement is a taboo elsewhere in Europe. In France, however, it is more often ignored than debated. We discuss European defence, sovereignty, immigration, and competitiveness. We even debate the future of the European Union itself. But its enlargement? The progress of accession negotiations? The reforms undertaken by candidate countries? The chapters that have been opened or closed? The criteria they must fulfil before joining the Union? Almost never.
The Day Montenegro Will Knock on the Door
While French President Emmanuel Macron was attending the EU–Western Balkans summit in Tivat on 5 June 2026, I was taking part in the ninth meeting of the Friends of the Western Balkans network, where I spoke in particular with Christian Castagna, president of VoisinageS and advocacy officer at the association “For Ukraine, for their freedom and ours!”. His answer was unequivocal: “EU enlargement is a non-issue, or even a counter-issue, in French public debate.And President Macron’s pro-Serbian stance does not clarify the issue of adherence to European values for candidate or potential candidate countries.” That at least is clear…
After talking about the limited attention given to EU enlargement by French political parties during the 2024 European election campaign, he criticised the media silence surrounding Montenegro’s potential accession: “The media ignore this subject. They will continue to do so for as long as possible. But when Montenegro’s accession happens – if we choose to be optimistic – the reactions will be negative and will flood the French media space.”
If French citizens are currently poorly informed about Montenegro’s accession process, how will they react when this prospect becomes reality? For Christian Castagna, the risk is that enlargement will suddenly enter public debate through controversy rather than information, as national concerns come to overshadow the issues at stake in this accession process.
An Enlargement Process Poorly Understood in France
For Léonie, 22, a physiotherapist, EU enlargement has recently returned to the public debate. This renewed attention is mainly driven by the war in Ukraine and its impact on the balance of the European continent. “I think this is a topical issue, given the conflict in Ukraine,” she explains. Alongside her is Lazar, also 22, a medical student born in Serbia and who moved to France at the age of ten; he is therefore familiar with the region through his personal background.
Neither of them knew, at the time of our conversation, that Montenegro is currently considered the most advanced candidate for European Union membership. Léonie discovers this in real time: “I had no idea, thank you for the information! I thought the most advanced countries were Moldova and Ukraine […].” Lazar is equally surprised: “I only knew that it was one of the candidate countries.”
Regarding the enlargement process itself, Lazar tends to have a “rather positive” view, as a potential EU enlargement could, in his opinion, foster exchanges and cooperation between countries – provided it is properly prepared in advance.“It would mainly bring increased economic exchanges, but also greater cultural diversity. Moreover, it could give the EU greater political weight in the world. Enlargement could also encourage new political and economic reforms that would benefit both the countries joining and those still in the accession process, as well as their respective populations,” he explains.
As the discussion deepens, their perspectives converge towards a shared observation: the French population’s fragmented understanding of the Western Balkans. “In France, we are not sufficiently informed about the history, political context, or even the culture of these countries,” Léonie says. She describes a region often reduced either to postcard imagery designed to attract tourists, or to the violent conflicts that marked the former Yugoslavia, without a real understanding of its diversity and complex history. This lack of awareness is all the more understandable given that the term “Western Balkans” itself is primarily a political term used by the EU to refer to the countries in the region that are in the process of joining the Union, rather than a geographically or culturally homogeneous group. “I think they [the French] don’t even know what the Balkans means,” she adds, with a touch of irony.
Lazar shares this impression, arguing that knowledge remains superficial. “The French may know the Balkans and briefly about the wars of the 1990s, but that is about it. Many people are not necessarily aware of the political and economic situation of these countries, nor of their rich cultural heritage and remarkable landscapes,” he states.
For Léonie, a possible accession of Montenegro could precisely help reduce this distance. She envisions increased exchanges, as well as renewed curiosity about a country still largely unknown to the French public. “It could encourage people to discover Montenegro, to work there, to establish businesses, to develop trade and economic links with the country […]”, she underlines. From this perspective, enlargement is not only a diplomatic process: it also becomes a way of bringing societies closer together that still, today, know relatively little about one another. “I think we should develop more communication channels in France to share information about these beautiful countries worth discovering,” she concludes.
There Are Fears Surrounding EU Enlargement
Charlotte is a PhD candidate in French and comparative literature. She approaches the debates on EU enlargement with a perspective shaped by academic research, but also by a more personal curiosity about how these issues are addressed, or not, in her country’s public sphere.
She recalls becoming aware of Montenegro’s status as the most advanced candidate for EU membership at a very specific moment: when discussions about Ukraine dominated the European debate, in the context opened by the Russian invasion of February 2022. “Let’s be honest: the only thing I knew about Montenegro, before doing my own research a few months ago, was the concerns regarding press freedom in the country,” she responds when asked about her initial knowledge of the country.
Charlotte also refers to the concerns that may accompany debates on enlargement. In her view, part of French public opinion still associates the accession of new member states with economic or social risks: “I think many people associate enlargement with the arrival of cheaper labour or with additional costs for member states,” she states. These perceptions, she argues, are part of a broader set of persistent stereotypes about EU enlargement towards Eastern Europe, often reduced to simplified and anxiety-driven representations, such as those related to truck drivers. In France, the best-known example remains that of the “Polish plumber,” an expression popularised by Philippe de Villiers, a former French Member of the European Parliament, during the 2005 referendum campaign on the European Constitutional Treaty.
However, Charlotte does not oppose the accession of new member states. On the contrary, she believes that enlargement could help strengthen the stability of the European continent, provided it is accompanied by a genuine political deepening of the EU. In her view, some of the reluctance could be eased through greater efforts in education and communication about the countries concerned and the real challenges of their integration.
For Some French Citizens, the Real Question Is the Future of the European Union
Bernold Hasenknopf, professor of supramolecular chemistry and Vice-President for Europe of Sorbonne University, follows European politics both through his professional responsibilities and, as a European citizen, through major media outlets and academic information channels. I have known Bernold for several years: we worked together within the European university alliance 4EU+, in which he remains actively involved today. Knowing that he closely follows developments related to Montenegro’s accession, and given his academic background and engagement in European projects, I wanted to gather his perspective on this issue.
For him, the question is not whether the European Union should continue to enlarge, but how it can do so effectively. “We need to do better than we have so far. We need to prepare the European Union to welcome more member states,” he assesses. He argues in particular that extending qualified majority voting would help reduce institutional blockages linked to national veto rights. “I still have a bad memory of the Nice Summit, where the EU did not really succeed in reforming itself to increase the number of member states,” he says.
He goes on to explain that the EU must become more than a common market and strengthen its political and social dimension, recalling that it was born out of a historical project of stabilisation between former adversaries. “The founding of the EU helped bring peace between peoples who considered each other hereditary enemies,” he notes, thinking first of Franco-German reconciliation, and then of more recent rapprochements in Central Europe – particularly between Germany and Poland – although these dynamics are still perceived unevenly depending on political contexts.
It is this role of peacebuilding that, in his view, enlargement could continue to play today in the Western Balkans, where historical, communal, and religious fault lines still persist. The challenge would therefore not be merely economic or institutional, but profoundly political: transforming spaces marked by division into a shared framework of cooperation.
“We are living through polycrises that go beyond nation-states. So we have every interest in removing any obstacle to effective cooperation between neighbours,” he insists, before broadening his argument further. This is why enlargement can no longer be approached solely through the criteria of the past. “Economic, social, and environmental arguments have long structured this debate, but today the question of European security has become central. And we must act quickly, because external powers are seeking to exploit internal tensions to weaken the European Union,” he elaborates.
“I have visited the country twice, and I have seen their commitment to the European Higher Education Area. They are adopting the rules and formal frameworks,” Bernold Hasenknopf shared his experience of Montenegro. He also notes a certain fatigue linked to the length of the accession process. Some of his Montenegrin interlocutors have expressed frustration with the prolonged waiting period, while others appear more receptive to the influence of external powers such as China…
Despite Criticism, the European Union Remains Attractive
For Juliette, 25, a master’s student in Business Management and Administration, the fact that new countries are still seeking to join the European Union is telling. While the EU is often portrayed as an institution in crisis or in decline, it nevertheless continues to exert a strong pull on its neighbouring countries.
During her studies in history and geography, Juliette regularly followed European Union news. Yet she admits that she has gradually lost this habit. “If you hadn’t told me about Emmanuel Macron’s visit to Montenegro, I probably wouldn’t have known about it!”, she notes.
This lack of visibility contrasts with the benefits the European Union has brought to many citizens. She spontaneously refers to her experience of the Erasmus programme, which allowed her to study in the United Kingdom and Germany: “The EU has given me a lot through the Erasmus programme, which I will always speak of positively.”
In her view, enlargement should first and foremost be approached through the lens of exchanges: student mobility, academic cooperation, professional mobility, economic development, and knowledge sharing.
More broadly, Juliette observes that French public debate focuses heavily on criticism of the European Union, but rarely on its attractiveness: “This ageing EU, which everyone criticises and mistreats, well in the end, why are there still countries that want to join it?” As examples, she mentions Brexit, past debates around a possible “Frexit” during the 2024 European elections, as well as the Eurosceptic rhetoric that regularly occupies French political and media discourse. “I feel that we no longer really address this perspective of why it is useful and why the European Union still manages to bring people together and attract them,” she notes.
Her testimony ultimately invites a shift in perspective on enlargement: instead of focusing solely on what the EU might risk losing by welcoming new members, we should perhaps also ask what continues to make this political project sufficiently “attractive” to inspire new applications.
A Gap That Still Needs to Be Bridged
At the end of this research, I am not left with the image of a French public that is broadly hostile to EU enlargement. Rather, I see a public that still knows relatively little about the Western Balkans, that rarely debates their European future, and whose concerns are more focused on the conditions under which enlargement should take place.
Yet this process is very real. For several years now, countries such as Montenegro, Albania, North Macedonia, and Moldova have been adapting their legislation, reforming their institutions, and gradually aligning their policies with the EU acquis. Governments fall, political majorities shift, and national strategies are built around this European objective. In the Western Balkans, EU accession structures a significant part of daily political debate. In France, by contrast, enlargement often seems to exist only through occasional reactions, usually when concerns or opposition arise…
The challenge in the years ahead will not only be to prepare Montenegro – or any other candidate country – for EU membership. It will also be to better prepare European citizens to understand the countries that aspire to join them. While none of the people I spoke to firmly opposed Montenegro’s accession to the European Union, their views on enlargement are often shaped by limited information about candidate countries and about the actual state of accession negotiations.
I would like to end this analysis with the cautiously optimistic words of Charlotte: “I think that in France, there are many people who are pro-European, who like the EU, and who would be enthusiastic about enlargement if they were aware of Montenegro’s progress towards EU integration.”
The author is a master’s student in Central European Studies at Sorbonne University in Paris and an international intern at the Centre for Civic Education (CCE).