Three years have passed since Kosovo applied for membership in the European Union (EU), yet the EU Council has still not examined Kosovo’s application dossier.
Kosovo’s application for EU membership has been gathering dust in the drawers of the EU Council for three years, as member states have not shown the willingness to forward the request to the European Commission for assessment on whether the small Balkan country deserves to officially open accession negotiations.
Although Kosovo’s authorities have insisted that the country has met the required criteria and reforms to receive the European Commission’s questionnaire the first official step on the long path toward EU membership several member states continue to block further progress, linking Kosovo’s advancement to the normalization dialogue with Serbia.
Kosovo submitted its application for EU membership on December 15, 2022. Since then, the presidency of the EU Council has rotated among seven member states: the Czech Republic, Sweden, Spain, Belgium, Hungary, Poland, and Denmark. While the Czech Republic formally accepted the application, none of the subsequent presidencies have examined Kosovo’s dossier.
From January 1, 2026, the EU Council presidency will be assumed by Cyprus — one of the five EU member states that do not recognize Kosovo’s independence — suggesting that Kosovo may face additional obstacles in advancing its membership application.
The EU has repeatedly assured Western Balkan countries that their future lies within the Union, provided they resolve outstanding issues — primarily the normalization of relations between Kosovo and Serbia. To encourage this process, the EU has continuously allocated financial support to the region, most recently through a €6 billion growth package aimed at facilitating reforms.
Ten countries are currently involved in the EU enlargement process, nine of which hold candidate status. Kosovo remains the only Western Balkan country that has yet to obtain candidate status. At the same time, EU measures imposed on Kosovo in 2023 have not been lifted, further complicating its path toward EU integration.
Adnan Ćerimagić of the European Stability Initiative (ESI) has noted that Kosovo, alongside Serbia and Turkey, is among the only countries that have made no formal progress in the accession process since the EU’s “enlargement momentum” of 2022.
In this context, he assessed that Kosovo has improved its level of preparedness for membership in 8 out of 31 policy areas evaluated by the European Commission, surpassing North Macedonia, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Turkey, and Moldova.
