BRUSSELS, October 1 — The European Commission is drafting rules that would let new members of the bloc face temporary limits on their voting rights, a reform package scheduled to anchor a strategic debate on enlargement when EU leaders convene in the second half of this month.
The Commission has confirmed it is preparing the proposals. A Commission spokesperson told Euronews in early July that Brussels was working on its own text ahead of the summit, as capitals grew steadily more engaged in the argument over how strictly future members should be held to their obligations. The European Council has formally scheduled the discussion for October 15–16, though the final package has not been publicly confirmed for that exact date.
At the center of the debate is a narrow but consequential mechanism: a transition period during which a new member state could not block decisions in the most sensitive policy fields, where the EU currently requires unanimity. Those fields are foreign policy, the Union budget, and any further enlargement itself. Germany, France, the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg put forward such a proposal in June, coupled with special safeguard clauses to be written into future accession treaties allowing measures against a candidate that seriously departs from democratic or rule-of-law commitments.
The five governments frame the risk through the experience of Hungary under Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, whose repeated use of the veto repeatedly stalled common decisions. They stop short of demanding that enlargement be slowed; France and Germany both back further accessions while insisting that the institution’s decision-making survive them.
Montenegro is the country for which the outcome matters most. It is the most advanced candidate, with all 33 negotiation chapters opened and 16 provisionally closed, and has set its sights on becoming the Union’s 28th member in 2028. Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said in June that a 2028 accession date for Montenegro is “achievable.” Brussels has already begun drafting the future accession treaty, and officials expect it to become the first generation of such compacts to carry the new guardrails. The Commission’s concern is that conditions written only for Montenegro would create an uneven framework; the preference in Brussels is for a template that could apply to Ukraine, Moldova and any later candidate.
Ukraine and Moldova stand to be shaped by the same rules. Talks with both accelerated through the summer: the first negotiation cluster covering fundamentals — the rule of law, democratic institutions and public administration — opened in June, and progress followed on foreign policy questions in July. For Kyiv, the stakes are concrete. A system of transitional veto limits could let Ukraine join relatively quickly while initially narrowing its ability to block decisions; it could equally make acceptance of enlargement easier among member states that fear a Union of more than 30 states becomes unmanageable.
The European Commission frames enlargement as a geopolitical instrument, a means of consolidating security in the Western Balkans and Eastern Europe and of narrowing external influence in both. What the October summit decides will therefore determine not only who joins the European Union, but how the bloc governs itself once it does.