North Macedonia’s EU aspirations face bumpy ride after elections (2024)

An impending change in North Macedonia’s government risks reviving tensions with Bulgaria and Greece — further complicating the country’s already winding path to EU membership.

Back in 2018, the Balkan nation of 2.1 million had looked on course for full integration when it resolved a decades-long dispute with Greece over its name.

Skopje ultimately agreed to that name change in the “Prespa agreement” in exchange for EU negotiations and NATO membership.

Since then, however, the citizens of North Macedonia have become increasingly frustrated with the slowness of the accession process, and public support for the EU has dropped sharply.

Elections to choose a new government and president on May 8 look set to usher in a new administration under the VMRO-DPMNE party, which is taking a confrontational approach with both Sofia and Athens — both of whom would need to agree to Skopje’s admission into the bloc.

Riling the Bulgarian side, VMRO-DPMNE is rejecting Sofia’s demand for constitutional changes recognizing a Bulgarian minority. Meanwhile, the Greeks are increasingly attuned to the fact that VMRO-DPMNE’s prime ministerial front-runner is referring to the country as “Macedonia” rather than “North Macedonia” — reigniting the old tensions with Greece about the use of the name of the homeland of Alexander the Great.

Opinion polls indicate VMRO-DPMNE, currently the main opposition party, is ahead and is expected to replace the SDSM socialist party, which has run the country since 2017, even though a coalition will be needed.

The first round of the presidential election on April 24 indicated a changing of the political order. Gordana Siljanovska-Davkova, backed by VMRO, scored a dominant victory, garnering 40.1 percent of the vote, while incumbent Stevo Pendarovski of SDSM won 19.9 percent.

“These elections are for sure important for North Macedonia from an EU accession perspective, because in the polls VMRO is in the lead and we are yet to see whether, when and how it will deliver on the constitutional changes for the continuing of the accession negotiations,” said Simonida Kacarska from the European Policy Institute in Skopje.

Grumpy neighbors

VMRO-DPMNE leader Hristijan Mickoski — and most likely the next prime minister — has vowed not to vote for constitutional changes “under Bulgarian dictation either now or in the future.”

Mickoski is also arguing for the end of consensus in the EU political process to get the Bulgarians — who have grievances about what they see as Macedonian appropriation of their historical and linguistic identity — out of the room.

“They should ask the Bulgarian representative to leave the place where this decision is being taken and go somewhere where he can have a coffee or something else,” Mickoski said.

Relations between the two countries — which were already poor — may take a turn for the worse, argued Marko Trosanovski, president at the Institute for Democracy (IDSCS) in Skopje.

“Surveys show that Bulgaria is perceived as the biggest threat for the national interest of North Macedonia,” he said. “VMRO will try, to show more opposition, more criticism, more defiance, which can further deteriorate the relations between the two countries.”

Bulgaria is also preparing for yet another general election — the sixth since April 2021 — on June 9, and there is a risk that North Macedonia emerges as a political football in election rhetoric, particularly in the nationalist camp.

It’s also hardly helping that Mickoski already uses the name “Macedonia” internally, and is pledging to do so officially if elected, challenging the international agreement.

Greece is watching.

“The Prespa Agreement is a conditionality for the progress of North Macedonia’s EU accession process,” Greece’s Foreign Minister George Gerapetritis said while speaking in parliament on April 26 and called on Skopje not to deviate.

Sensing the tensions could ease in the electoral aftermath, Athanasios Loupas, an expert in Balkan history, said VMRO will eventually not sacrifice “the European perspective of the country on the altar of its nationalist rhetoric.”

“This rhetoric will certainly be a matter of concern for the Greek public opinion in the coming period, but it will be more for show and for internal consumption, not for issues of substance,” he added.

Waning trust

Within North Macedonia, voters are mainly concerned with the quality of life, corruption, shrinking population and a brain drain.

Trust in the EU is also waning, even though it still remains high. Support has dropped to 65 percent, from 85-90 percent when the country initially received candidate status in 2005.

After the breakthrough of the name change, there was euphoria in the Western Balkans that enlargement could finally be possible. But France vetoed the start of EU accession talks with North Macedonia and Albania, a move deemed a “huge historical mistake” by then-European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker.

Then the Bulgarian veto followed.

“With the ‘Prespa Agreement,’ the EU got a textbook example of an opportunity in the region,” said Kacarska, adding that it is now difficult to discuss the issue in public, because it’s so polarizing.

“If there’s one example that the EU had in terms of having pro-reform forces and openness to consensus, this was North Macedonia in 2018. Those conditions of 2018 are incomparable to what we have now,” she added.

Deal still possible?

The constitutional changes sought by Bulgaria require a two-thirds majority in parliament, which no coalition government that will emerge after the vote will have. Despite all the harsh rhetoric there are hopes that this might diminish after the elections.

“There is a lot of politicking around securing the two-thirds majority, as was the case in 2018 when the Prespa Agreement with Greece was to be implemented through a constitutional change,” said Dimitar Bechev, senior fellow at Carnegie Europe.

“Then VMRO provided some votes — in a quid pro quo which involved amnesty for their members involved in a violent storming of parliament in April 2017. Maybe some behind-the-scenes deal is possible now as well,” he added.

The Albanian factor

Traditionally, at least one party from the Albanian community, which makes up more than a quarter of the country’s population, is part of the coalition. The Democratic Union for Integration (DUI), the country’s third largest party has dominated the scene for the past 20 years.

But a new opposition block of smaller Albanian parties was mobilized significantly, and they could potentially join a coalition with VMRO.

The presence of the two Albanian blocks is often seen as an area for greater regional influence between Albania’s Prime Minister Edi Rama and Kosovo’s Prime Minister Albin Kurti. The latter has been showing strong support for the anti-DUI bloc.

Trosanovski, the Skopje-based analyst, said the next government composition will more likely share political power proportionally to the partisan representation in the parliament which is not currently the case.

“This will definitely decrease the influence of Albania in the Macedonian political processes,” Trosanovski added.