Thousands of tiny white caps are poking up out of compost and peat that’s been packed onto long metal shelves in a dark, sealed room, where the temperature is strictly controlled. The mushrooms have been growing for more than a fortnight and will be harvested and packaged in a day’s time.
Dijana Markovic (40), who runs the Monte-plod mushroom farm with her husband Darko Brnovic, says they spread seeds in a mixture of compost imported from Serbia, peat from Italy or the Netherlands, and some fertiliser and hay.
In the beginning their workers had to mix the seeds and soil together by hand, because they could not afford to buy specialist heavy machinery.
Their farm is near Spuz, a little town surrounded by the green undulating hills and mountains that define Montenegro’s geography. The area has a rough and rural feel but is only 20 minutes’ drive from Podgorica, the capital of the small Balkan country.
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The farm produces between 700kg and 1,000kg of mushrooms a day. “Depends on the day ... Everything that we produce we sell,” Markovic says. “Before on our old farm we produced 300 kilos to 400, 500 kilos per day,” she says.
The family business was able to tap a special “pre-accession” fund set up to help modernise agriculture in countries hoping to join the European Union.
The EU money funded more than half the cost of a €2 million facility built in 2022, and helped kit it out with new equipment. The machinery mixes and lays the rows of soil and peat onto the long metal trays where the mushrooms are grown. It has made a huge difference.
“The quality of our product is much, much better ... It’s much, much more easier for our staff,” says Markovic.
In the past they had to manually test the air and soil temperature. Today, new equipment monitors all that constantly. They can pull up the latest readings on their phones. “You always check the temperature, the moisture, because everything has to be perfect all the time,” Markovic says.
““We started in 2012 and the first mushrooms we picked were in 2014. It was very hard to start, we sold the car, took some loans from the bank,” she says, as we walk around the farm.
‘Montenegro has set itself a very ambitious timetable. We of course want to hope that they can deliver. If they do deliver, then the EU should deliver’
— Senior EU official
The couple gave up full-time jobs to go into the mushroom business. Markovic was an English teacher, and her husband worked as a lawyer for the state motorway construction company. He was keen to start his own business and had been looking out for a gap in a market.
The idea came to them when a friend who owned a bakery and restaurant complained about the difficulty sourcing fresh mushrooms in Podgorica. They plan to build an extension to the facility to expand their operation in the coming years.
Markovic is hopeful that talk of her country joining the EU in the not so distant future materialises. “I think that it will be better for us, for Montenegro, that we join,” she says.
The Balkan country of about 620,000 people is the clear front-runner in the race to become the next member state of the EU. It has been more than a decade since a new country joined the 27-state bloc.
The administration in Podgorica wants to complete all the internal structural reforms that are a precondition of membership by the end of this year, an ambitious timeline.
“We believe it’s way more than us, it’s about the whole enlargement project,” says Predrag Zenovic, who is leading Montenegro’s negotiations with the EU.
“We think it’s also a test of credibility of the whole enlargement policy, because if Montenegro delivers, we expect that this is acknowledged ... We would expect the member states to recognise these achievements, [and] when they’re achieved, welcome Montenegro into this family of European nations,” he says.
It’s a marathon, not a sprint, but Montenegro looks to be turning the corner of the final bend.
The country applied to start the years-long process of negotiating entry into the EU club in 2008, and two years later became an official candidate.
Croatia was the last country to join the EU in 2013, and for the guts of a decade afterwards, progress on further enlargement stalled. There was no appetite in Paris and other European capitals to expand the tent again.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 changed the geopolitical calculus and breathed life into the enlargement debate. Suddenly, European leaders were eager to signal the door to the EU was open again.
The European Commission, the union’s powerful executive that leads accession talks, feared inaction could push countries in the western Balkan states and other eastern neighbours into Moscow’s orbit of influence.
Montenegro has completed 16 of the 33 “chapters” of reforms. That work has involved syncing its national laws with the back catalogue of Brussels rules and regulations, and bringing Montenegro’s economy and judicial system into line with European standards.
The government is making good headway on the necessary changes that remain outstanding – so much so that work has formally begun in Brussels to draft an accession treaty governing Montenegro’s entry into the political union.
“Montenegro aims to provisionally close all chapters by the end of this year, by end of 2026, with the ambition of becoming the 28th member by 2028,” says Zenovic.
The former Yugoslav republic is being viewed as a test case of whether the EU is genuine about welcoming in new countries.
[ The EU plan to add seven new member countries, including UkraineOpens in new window ]
“I remember Montenegro was a front-runner also in 2017 and in 2019. I didn’t mean a lot ... You were [the] front-runner, but the race was not happening,” Zenovic says.
“Montenegro is of course running to reach the goal, and the goal is the full-fledged membership, but I think Montenegro should be seen as running in order to see if the doors are open, if the process is credible,” the negotiator says.
All 27 member states have to sign off on any future enlargement. In France, this would require a referendum. That could be politically tricky to pull off – particularly as France is heading into a contentious presidential election next spring.
A victory for Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally in that crucial election might scupper Montenegro’s European ambitions.
“Nobody should be afraid of this beautiful small country becoming part of the EU,” says Zenovic, who took over as Montenegro’s chief negotiator in late 2023.
He believes there is a “window of opportunity” to show that the EU path is a credible route to other candidate countries overhauling their political, legal and economic systems to satisfy Brussels. “We can be a success story for everyone,” he says.
‘I notice in the air a positive atmosphere that people are really looking forward, that that’s going to happen by 2028 ... In the last six months it really feels that people are excited’
— Dijana Markovic, Monte-plod mushroom farm
“Montenegro has set itself a very ambitious timetable. We of course want to hope that they can deliver. If they do deliver, then the EU should deliver,” one senior EU official says about its side of the deal.
Bedding in respect for the rule of law was one of the most important reforms, Zenovic says. Montenegro’s judiciary had become more independent, more professional, more efficient, he says. “The rule of law has become the only game in the town,” he says.
Petty corruption and the need to have “pull” inside the public administration to get certain things done is still a problem in the country, however.
“It’s something that [has] to be dealt with, but you don’t need the eyes of the whole of Europe to deal with,” he says.
“We want our path to be scrutinised, our reforms to be evaluated ... Once we close all the chapters, you know the ball is not in our yard any more.”
“Montenegro wants to serve as an example, as a role model, as an encouragement to the other candidate countries in the western Balkans,” its president Jakov Milatović told a press conference after a summit of European leaders he hosted in the picturesque coastal town of Tivat earlier this month.
“Our European path has gone through different stages. There have been periods of progress and unfortunately periods of stagnation,” he said.
For a long time, the country’s push for EU membership was an abstract concept to ordinary people, but locals say that has started to change now the finish line seems close.
“I notice in the air a positive atmosphere that people are really looking forward, that that’s going to happen by 2028 ... In the last six months it really feels that people are excited,” says Markovic of the Monte-plod mushroom farm.
Integrating the Balkan states into the EU would bolster the union’s claim to be a peace project.
The region was torn apart by several vicious ethnic conflicts during the break-up of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s.
Markovic remembers the 1999 Nato bombing of Slobodan Milosević’s Serb forces in response to their campaign of ethnic cleansing in neighbouring Kosovo.
She was 13years old at the time, and her family lived near Podgorica airport, which was targeted in the Nato strikes.
Although aligned with Milosević, Montenegro did not support his campaign in Kosovo, but the airfield was targeted as Nato believed it was being used as a base in the war. “There were bombs falling two kilometres from my house,” Markovic says. “For years I was scared of thunder,” she says.
Kosovo and Serbia’s accession bids have been effectively parked until the two countries can normalise relations with each other. The hope has long been that the promise of future EU membership will eventually motivate the two governments to move beyond their historical grievances.
Elsewhere in the neighbourhood, Albania is making good yards on the long list of accession reforms. Prime minister Edi Rama hopes his country will be ready by the end of the decade to follow Montenegro in the door.
In Tuzi, a suburb of Montenegro’s capital, the owners of a family-owned farm growing olive trees are looking forward to the economic benefits of joining the European common market.
Alisa Bektasevic (24), marketing manager at Lucka olive oil, says pre-accession EU grants allowed the business to expand and purchase modern machinery, which helped boost output.
[ Montenegro’s president calls on EU to grant country membershipOpens in new window ]
“I think it is better to connect with Europe,” says Bektasevic, who is nearly finished a degree in medicine. She feels EU membership will expand the country’s horizons.
“We are in a small box that we need to get out of,” she says.
EU enlargement: who’s in the queue?
Front-runner
Montenegro (population: 600,000)
Status: A leading candidate with all negotiating chapters opened, but progress slowed by reforms on rule of law and corruption
Strong contenders
Albania (population: 2.8 million)
Status: Formal accession talks began in 2022, advancing in parallel with North Macedonia, with steady but cautious progress on judiciary and governance reforms
North Macedonia (population: 2.1 million)
Status: Accession talks opened in 2022 after resolving disputes with Greece and Bulgaria, but further progress hinges on constitutional changes and bilateral issues
Fast-track
Moldova (population: 2.5 million)
Status: Granted candidate status in 2022 and boosted by strong EU backing since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, now pushing to open full negotiations
Ukraine (population: 37 million - pre-war estimate)
Status: The most politically significant candidate, granted candidate status in 2022, with accession talks expected to begin amid sweeping wartime reforms and geopolitical urgency
Stalled
Serbia (population: 6.5 million)
Status: Long-running talks remain stalled over rule-of-law concerns and its refusal to align fully with EU foreign policy, notably on Russia
