History. 6 of 7: six times the talks were done by the end of the next six-month Council presidency after the date the EU named; only Croatia's 2009 date ran longer, to June 2011.
Hunch. On 3 November Andrej Plenković said two of Croatia's six open demands touch Montenegro's courts or records of missing people, which the government cannot settle alone.
The June 2027 market resolves on the same Commission pages: YES if all 33 chapters are provisionally closed by 30 June 2027, Brussels time, and closing them by 31 December 2026 also counts. NO if any chapter is still open on 30 June 2027, with ANSA, Balkan Insight and RFE/RL as backups.
We looked for cases where the EU, or the European Economic Community before it, named a date in an official text by which entry talks with a country should or could end. We found seven such times since 1984, and talks ended on time in three. The four late ones ran over by two weeks, six months, six months and 18 months. (UK Parliament; European Parliament; European Parliament; European Parliament; EUR-Lex; UK Parliament)