As a Bosnian and a Serbian citizen, it is disheartening to realize that at the current pace, neither of my countries is likely to join the EU in my lifetime. Mathematically, since it has taken Serbia 12 years (2014–2026) to provisionally close just two out of 35 chapters, they are on a trajectory to finish in the year 2224 .... roughly 198 years from now.
The situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina is even further behind; while the EU formally opened accession negotiations in March 2024, as of early 2026, the country has yet to even adopt a negotiating framework or open its first thematic cluster. Given this stagnation, the '6 years per chapter' math might actually be an optimistic estimate for us.