World

Montenegro pursues values-driven EU enlargement process

Published

1 year ago

February 4, 2025

Montenegro pursues values-driven EU enlargement process

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not represent in any way the editorial position of Euronews.

The President of Montenegro outlines four scenarios in which candidate countries may engage with EU enlargement, with only one – in which both sides play their role fully in the democratisation process – is ideal.

It is encouraging that one of the seven priorities of the new European Commission explicitly focuses on enlargement, envisioning a Europe that is not only larger but also stronger on the world stage.

From the perspective of candidate countries, we are encouraged by the renewed momentum in Brussels and across the EU. This momentum has sparked a genuine appetite for new member states, and I find this inspiring. When I was elected President of Montenegro last year, I set an ambitious yet achievable goal: Montenegro, as a frontrunner among the candidate countries, to become the 28th EU member state by 2028.

Montenegro is the country that already holds NATO membership, has been in line with the EU’s common foreign and security policy for the last decade, has the euro as a currency (though unilaterally), and what I like to stress: has a strong civil sector and free, independent media. The country naturally has challenges and political turbulence, as any other democratic, pluralistic society has, but these are part of a democratisation process, rather than the consequence of its failure.

The reforms in Montenegro have been strongly driven by the promise of EU membership and the legitimacy that political parties derive from it. In fact, most, if not all, political parties in Montenegro are publicly committed to EU integration. Although one may question the sincerity of these commitments and whether they are merely declarative or truly substantive, nevertheless, considering that more than 80 percent of the population supports EU membership, it is clear why EU accession is such an important source of political legitimacy in Montenegrin politics.

However, the transformative power of the EU pathway is not unique to Montenegro; we have seen similar effects in other countries—Croatia (our only approximate neighbour that is already a member), Slovenia, another country with whom we shared a joint history for some time, as well as many other countries throughout Central and Eastern Europe. During my previous career as an economist at the EBRD, I observed first-hand the EU’s transformative power in these countries, a power unmatched by the influence of any other external actors.

In considering how enlargement might unfold, there are four main scenarios, each with lasting consequences for both the EU and the candidate countries:

Scenario One: The candidate country fails to utilize the EU accession process for democratic or institutional progress, and as a result, the EU does not admit it. The outcome is a clear lose-lose, leaving the EU with incomplete democracies at its borders and the candidate country without the benefits of EU membership, with de-democratisation forces taking the lead forward. It goes without saying that this scenario is also welcomed by the EU’s adversaries, who can then fully exert their influence.

Scenario Two: The candidate country uses the accession process productively—building institutions and advancing democratic standards—yet is still not accepted by the EU. History shows that this scenario often leads to regression and the reversal of democratic gains. Here, too, both sides ultimately lose in the long run. Yet some may be more capable of continuing along a positive path and building a stable democracy rooted in the rule of law. Unfortunately, history teaches us otherwise.

Scenario Three: The candidate country shows insufficient democratic progress, yet the EU admits it anyway based solely on geopolitical considerations. Some advocate for this approach, regardless of the state of reforms. While this might appear to satisfy both the EU’s enlargement drive and the candidate countries’ ambitions, especially for bigger sources of funding for development, in reality, it is not sustainable. Over the long term, both the EU and the country suffer, as core values like the rule of law and effective governance are sidelined. Moreover, this scenario could also benefit adversaries, providing them with opportunities to exert influence within the EU.

Scenario Four (The Win-Win Scenario): Both parties do their part. The candidate country leverages the accession process to achieve genuine democratic progress and build robust institutions, while also depoliticizing its public administration, enabling a free media environment, and focusing on sustainable economic development, and then is welcomed into the EU. This is the ideal outcome—one that ensures shared growth, resilience, and stability. It is this scenario that I believe we must all strive to achieve.

This is precisely what I envision for Montenegro. We have to use the EU accession process—this powerful external anchor—to drive reforms and fortify our democracy, ensuring that we join the EU as a fully prepared and committed member state. It is therefore essential to make the most of the accession process now.

For this aim, enlargement should not only be about financial gain—as there are countless global avenues for attracting investment with perhaps fewer conditions required. What we should value most about the EU is the set of principles it upholds. We seek to build a society anchored in the rule of law, good governance, and equal opportunities. These core values make EU membership a goal worth pursuing.

As President of Montenegro, I am committed to guiding my country through this critical phase of our European journey. I hope that both the EU and candidate countries will work together to achieve a truly win-win scenario—one that not only enhances the Union’s strength and unity but also helps candidates become responsible, democratic members of the European family.

I am deeply convinced that Montenegro’s accession to the EU is a political milestone greater than itself; it would show that the process is alive, that reforms truly pay off, that new political culture pays off, and could become a success story and an example for all other candidate countries, if we all commit to the genuine reform agenda ahead.

Click to comment

World

Europe Day: 40 years of ties between Spain and the European Union

Published

40 minutes ago

May 9, 2026

Press Room

Europe Day: 40 years of ties between Spain and the European Union

The Spain that knocked on Europe’s door 40 years ago was a country that had only just emerged from 40 years of dictatorship.

Spain’s democratic transition, still fragile in some respects, found in European integration an institutional anchor, a guarantee that the freedoms it had won would not be reversed.

Felipe González, who had applied for membership in 1977 as leader of the Socialist opposition and was now governing as prime minister, saw it clearly: joining Europe was not just about economics. It was a statement of political identity. Spain was rejoining the community of democratic nations from which Francoism had excluded it.

The figures for that Spain of 1986 show how far back the starting point was: per capita income was around 7,300 euros, life expectancy was 76 and the population had yet to reach 38 million.

Exports accounted for barely 4.9% of GDP and infrastructure lagged decades behind European standards. Forty years on, per capita income is above 31,000 euros, life expectancy has reached 84 and exports have climbed to 34% of GDP.

None of these transformations can be separated from EU membership.

The early years: opening up and the shock

The initial stages of integration were not easy. Spain had to face the abrupt opening of its market to European competition, which triggered tensions across whole sectors of the economy, especially in industry and agriculture.

The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) profoundly reshaped the Spanish countryside, forcing through painful reconversions but also opening up new markets for Mediterranean products. Olive oil, fruit, wine: Spanish agriculture found in Europe a stage for expansion that had been unthinkable until then.

At the same time, European structural funds began to flow into a country that was in desperate need of them. The motorways that now link the Peninsula, the trains that criss-cross the country, the modernised ports, the telecommunications systems: all of this was built to a large extent with financial backing from Brussels.

In four decades, Spain has received more than 185 billion euros in European funds for infrastructure, employment, innovation and regional development. Without that injection, modernisation would have taken generations longer.

An unexpected symbol of those early years was the Erasmus programme, launched by the European Community in 1987. What began as a modest university exchange initiative gradually became the defining experience of a generation.

Spain became the country that receives the most Erasmus students in all of Europe, and more than 1.6 million Spaniards have taken part in the programme over these four decades. For many young people, Erasmus was not just a semester abroad: it was the first time they truly felt European.

Maastricht and the dream of the single currency

The year 1992 marked a turning point for all of Europe, and Spain was fully aware of its significance. The signing of the Treaty on European Union in Maastricht transformed the European Economic Community into the European Union proper and opened the way to the single currency.

For Spain, Maastricht also meant taking on economic convergence commitments that required deep reforms: deficit control, keeping inflation in check, budgetary discipline. It was the price of having a seat at the top table.

In parallel, 1995 brought another of the great achievements of the European project: the entry into force of the Schengen Agreement in Spain, alongside Germany, France, Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Portugal.

For the first time in modern history, citizens could cross Europe’s internal borders without showing their passport. The Schengen area was not just a convenience for tourists; it was the physical embodiment of an idea: that in Europe, people’s freedom of movement was a right, not a privilege.

And then the euro arrived. On 1 January 1999, Spain became one of the eleven founding countries of the eurozone, adopting the single currency for financial and commercial transactions.

On 1 January 2002, notes and coins reached citizens’ pockets and the peseta disappeared for good. It was a moment full of emotion and also tinged with a certain melancholy: the peseta was being abandoned, a currency with centuries of history, but something bigger was being gained, the feeling of sharing an economic destiny with hundreds of millions of Europeans.

Fittingly, it was at a summit held in Madrid in December 1995 that European leaders finally agreed on the name of the new currency: the euro.

Institutional leadership on five occasions

Over these 40 years, Spain has not limited itself to benefiting from the European project: it has also helped to build it. Since 1986, the country has held the Presidency of the Council of the European Union on five occasions, the most recent in the second half of 2023, under the motto “Europe, closer”, making it one of the member states most committed to driving the Union forward institutionally.

Three presidents of the European Parliament and nine European commissioners have been Spaniards over these four decades, a presence that reflects Spain’s growing weight in Europe’s political architecture.

Spain has also helped design some of the EU’s most important policies. It played a leading role in developing cohesion policy and in boosting the EU’s social dimension.

It was instrumental in including in the Amsterdam Treaty a sanctions mechanism for states that breached the Union’s fundamental values. And for decades it has played a distinctive role as a bridge between Europe and Ibero-America, drawing on its historical, cultural and linguistic ties with Latin America to enhance the EU’s external projection.

The great crisis and test of the euro

The years of the Great Recession brutally tested the strength of the European project and Spain’s resilience. The 2008 financial crisis triggered a devastating recession in the country: unemployment climbed above 26% in 2013, the construction sector collapsed and the financial system had to be partially bailed out with European funds.

The austerity policies imposed from Brussels fuelled deep social discontent and fed European scepticism among parts of the population that had borne the brunt of the cuts.

Even so, Spain did not abandon the euro or the European project. It opted for reform and recovery within the EU framework, and from 2014 it entered a growth cycle that was among the strongest in the eurozone. Painful as it was, the crisis also ended up showing that EU membership offered a safety net that would have been unimaginable alone.

The banking rescue coordinated by the European institutions, the financial solidarity mechanisms, access to capital markets underpinned by the European Central Bank: without Europe, the fallout could have been much more severe.

The pandemic and the NextGenerationEU funds

If the 2008 crisis was a test of endurance, the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 was something different: a demonstration that European solidarity could evolve into new, more ambitious forms.

For the first time in the history of European integration, the Union took on joint debt to finance the recovery of its member states. The NextGenerationEU funds made more than 140 billion euros in grants and loans available to Spain, the largest injection of European resources in the country’s history.

The pandemic was also a reminder that, when it works, European solidarity is an extraordinary asset. The coordination in vaccine purchasing, the European COVID certificate that made it possible to restore mobility, the joint response to an unprecedented threat: all this showed European citizens, Spaniards included, that the EU project was not just a market but also a community of shared destiny.

Forty years of transformation

The numbers tell a powerful story. Spanish exports of goods rose from 12.6 billion euros in 1986 to 141.5 billion in 2024. Real GDP has grown by more than 100% since accession. Life expectancy has increased by eight years over the past four decades.

The population has grown by more than 10 million people, largely thanks to immigration made possible by European prosperity. And more than 1.4 million young Spaniards have benefited from the European Youth Guarantee scheme to get into work.

The Spanish prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, has marked the day on his x.com account, stressing that the European Union is Spaniards’ home and future, as well as their privilege and their responsibility.

The challenges of the next 40 years

The anniversary is not only a time for celebration. It is also a moment for honest reflection on what still remains to be built. Territorial inequalities between the autonomous communities remain significant.

The green transition, population ageing, digital transformation and migration flows pose challenges that no country can face alone. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has reshaped Europe’s security map and forces Spain to rethink its contribution to common defence, as we have also seen with the US–Iran conflict and threats against European bases.

The new generations, who have grown up knowing no reality other than the European one, expect the Union to respond more effectively to these challenges. For them, Europe is not a historic achievement to be defended, but a starting point to be improved. That demand, far from being a threat to the project, is perhaps its best guarantee for the future.

Forty years on from that January night in 1986, European membership is now so taken for granted that it is hard to imagine Spain outside it.

World

Peter Magyar Prepares to Take Over as Hungary’s Leader From Viktor Orban

Published

10 hours ago

May 9, 2026

Press Room

Peter Magyar Prepares to Take Over as Hungary’s Leader From Viktor Orban

Peter Magyar, the former opposition leader, prepared to be sworn in as prime minister of Hungary on Saturday, after winning an uphill election campaign to unseat Viktor Orban, whose 16 years in power made him a global icon of nationalist right-wing politics.

Mr. Magyar, a 45-year-old lawyer, has vowed to reverse the democratic backsliding and embedded corruption that ultimately turned huge numbers of voters away from Mr. Orban’s Fidesz party and handed the opposition Tisza movement a landslide victory less than a month ago.

In April, Tisza, which Mr. Magyar took over in 2024 after souring on Fidesz and breaking from it, secured an overwhelming 141 seats in the national assembly. Fidesz managed to keep control of only 52 seats, despite extensive gerrymandering, near-total control of the news media and a full-throated endorsement from President Trump and his top officials.

The scale of Mr. Magyar’s victory has left Fidesz in pell-mell retreat, and has the potential to give him a powerful hand as he faces the monumental task of dismantling what Mr. Orban called “illiberal democracy” and reviving Hungary’s anemic economy.

But Mr. Magyar will have to prove his ability to lead the country. Many in his parliamentary faction are political novices; so is most of his cabinet.

His job could be harder if Fidesz-appointed dignitaries, including the president, the chief prosecutor, and heads of various judicial, regulatory, and oversight authorities remain at their post. Mr. Magyar instructed them to resign by the end of May

Many former Fidesz loyalists are already distancing themselves from the losing party.

Mr. Magyar has also pledged to hold corrupt businessmen and politicians accountable and to recover stolen funds for the state. That could, at least temporarily, help stabilize the economy.

A key test will be if he can reclaim E.U. funding withheld from the previous government, more than $12 billion of which is set to expire in August.

Voters have faith in him, according to a new poll by Median, an independent pollster that predicted the election result accurately. Seventy-two percent of Hungarians now think Mr. Magyar is suitable to lead the country.

Endre Hann, Median’s founder and managing director, said belief in Mr. Magyar helped overturn the rule of Mr. Orban, as “society gradually came to realize that Fidesz could be defeated.”

This belief persisted after the election. According to the same poll, nearly two-thirds of Hungarians think the country is headed in the right direction, twice the level recorded in November. But the Tisza government will have to “take many concrete steps to meet the high expectations,” Mr. Hann added.

Mr. Magyar will have to tread carefully. He won by pitching himself as a conservative to win over disaffected Fidesz voters. Liberal and left-wing voters disliked many of his views on immigration and L.G.B.T.Q. issues but supported him because he offered the first viable alternative to Mr. Orban in years.

Some expectations for a real change of direction for Hungary, both within the country and abroad, may prove overblown.

Mr. Magyar pledged to maintain border security, even in the face of E.U. asylum policies, while preserving good relations with the bloc. He said he would not veto the $106 billion loan package for Ukraine, though he plans to opt out of the financing.

Progressives hope he will abide by a recent ruling by the European Court of Justice and repeal a 2021 “child protection law” that connected homosexuality with pedophilia and restricted gay rights.

But doing so would risk alienating his right-wing voters, playing into Fidesz narratives that he is a closet liberal and a puppet of the European Union.

Civil organizations, for now, simply hope that Mr. Magyar will see them as partners, said Emese Pasztor, a lawyer and project manager at Budapest-based human rights organization Tasz. She said Tisza’s election victory felt like a “breath of fresh air.”

Ms. Pasztor hoped the new administration would be more receptive to criticism and willing to engage in discussion. “If governance would be transparent, and the public had better access to information,” that alone would be a success, she added.

Budapest’s mayor, Gergely Karacsony, who was vilified by the Fidesz government, is hoping that the relationship between the capital and the state will improve.

For years, the mayor accused Mr. Orban’s government, which drew most of its support from outside the relatively liberal capital, of withholding funding and weaponizing the tax system against the city.

“We’ve lost the last six years locked in a constant financial and political battle with the government,” Mr. Karacsony said in an interview. A lot of the city’s development and investment in infrastructure, which said were in very poor condition, had been put on hold.

“We want to honor 16 years of struggle and usher in a new era in Hungary,” Mr. Karacsony said. “We want to remember the sins of the Orban government to make sure that this kind of exclusionary, hate-driven political culture never takes root again.”

World

Three hikers killed after climbing restricted Indonesian volcano to create online content, police say

Published

12 hours ago

May 9, 2026

Press Room

Three hikers killed after climbing restricted Indonesian volcano to create online content, police say

NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!

Three people are dead and five others were injured Friday when Mount Dukono erupted on a remote Indonesian island, where the hikers were in a restricted area, authorities said.

About 20 climbers set out Thursday to climb the nearly 1,355-meter (4,445-foot) volcano in Halmahera, Indonesia, despite safety restrictions, North Halmahera police chief Erlichson Pasaribu said.

“They were aware that climbing was prohibited as the mountain is a restricted zone due to its high alert status, but insisted on going ahead,” Pasaribu said.

Despite warnings on social media and signs at the site, “many people remain determined to climb, driven by the desire to create online content,” Pasaribu said.

‘RECKLESS’ TOURISTS ON ISLAND HOT SPOT COULD BE SLAPPED WITH FINES FOR EMERGENCY SERVICES USE

In this photo released by the Badan Geologi, the geological agency of Indonesia’s Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources, Mount Dukono releases volcanic materials during an eruption in North Halmahera, Indonesia, Friday, May 8, 2026. (Badan Geologi via AP)

Pasaribu said that three people, including one local resident and two Singaporeans, were killed in the eruption. The Indonesian victim was from Ternate, which is in the same province as Mount Dukono.

The three victims’ bodies remain on the volcano, with ongoing eruptions and difficult terrain preventing them from being evacuated by rescue teams, Pasaribu said.

The group became stranded when the volcano erupted at 7:41 a.m. local time, sending a column of ash over six miles into the sky.

STUNNING PHOTOS CAPTURE MOMENT ONE OF INDONESIA’S MOST ACTIVE VOLCANOES ERUPTS

Rescue teams were deployed after receiving an emergency signal from the mountain area.

Joint search and rescue (SAR) teams prepare to evacuate victims affected by the eruption of Mount Dukono in North Halmahera, Maluku Province, Indonesia, on May 08, 2026. At least three Singaporeans have been killed, while 17 others are still being searched for. (Basarnas/Anadolu via Getty Images)

As of Friday afternoon, 17 climbers had been safely evacuated, including seven Singaporean nationals and two Indonesians who joined the rescue operation and provided information on climbing routes of the victims before the eruption, National Disaster Management Agency spokesperson Abdul Muhari said.

Five of those evacuated were reported injured.

MORE THAN 20 ‘ILL-PREPARED’ HYPOTHERMIC HIKERS RESCUED FROM SNOWY CONDITIONS ON NEW ENGLAND’S HIGHEST PEAK

Pasaribu said that police will question those who joined the hikers up the mountain. Fox News Digital has reached out to the Indonesian National Police for additional information.

According to the Smithsonian Institution’s Global Volcanism Program, Mount Dukono has been continuously erupting since 1933.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FOX NEWS APP

“Friday’s eruption was among the strongest during this period,” said Lana Saria, who heads Indonesia’s Geology Agency at the Energy and Mineral Resources Ministry.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.