History. 2 of 4: Croatia 2009 (21 days) and Serbia 2016 (47 days) fall inside the 87 days from the reported consent on 5 October to 31 December; Turkey took 104 and 266 days.
Hunch. EU officials already named next week as their target, so the end of the year leaves room for one delay like Serbia's in 2016.
The year-end market resolves the same way: YES if at least one new group of talks is opened for Ukraine by the end of 31 December 2026, NO if none is. The Commission press corner, The Guardian and BBC News are the backup.
We looked for cases where one EU country stopped blocking a candidate's entry talks, and every member country then had to agree to open new parts of those talks. We found four since 2009: Croatia once, Turkey twice and Serbia once. Each time we counted the days from the blocking country's consent to the opening.