With European Union (EU) candidate status being received in 2005, North Macedonia is officially the longest awaiting country for EU membership (besides Turkey) and now, the next most likely to receive it. Though its European integration journey since its 1991 independence has been long and strenuous, having had cultural disputes with several EU members and been a victim of the Yugoslav Wars, achieving its European aspiration seems now closer than ever as many hope for official accession by the end of 2023. What has North Macedonia’s journey towards EU accession entailed? And how has the country become a victim of language, identity, and historical heritage in this journey?

From Socialist Republic to candidate member of the European Union

In line with the succession of subsiding Socialist regimes in Europe after 1989, the then-Socialist Republic of Macedonia proclaimed itself a parliamentary democracy in 1990, acquiring peaceful independence from Yugoslavia a year later. Though the country would pass unscaved during the majority of the Yugoslav wars, it would succumb to ethnic conflict in 2001 due to spillover from the neighbouring Kosovo War. The 2001 insurgency in Macedonia saw the country in armed conflict with Albanian nationalists from the Kosovo War over ethnic Albanian territories in the north of the country. However, upon the possibility of escalation and with the backdrop of far more violent ethnic conflicts in the region, the insurgency was quickly ended that same year with NATO intervention and the US-EU brokered Ohrid Agreement, allowing for more autonomy in the Albanian territories of the country.

Even so, ambitions to integrate within Western and Euro-Atlantic institutions remained high within the entire population (among both ethnic Albanians and Slavic Macedonians) and North Macedonia soon became the first country in the Western Balkans to sign the EU’s Stabilisation and Association Agreement in 2001. The agreement, which came into effect in 2004, marked the official start to the country’s European integration as it launched a process of EU-sponsored reforms to ‘strengthen democracy and the rule of law’, ‘contribute to political, economic and institutional stability’, ‘complete the transition into a functioning market economy’, and more. In exchange, North Macedonia would receive financial and technical assistance, and both parties would commit to ‘gradually establishing a bilateral free trade area’ as well as ‘removing customs tariffs and quotas’. North Macedonia would subsequently submit its application for EU candidate membership in 2004, receiving it officially the following year.

A long and strenuous journey towards accession

Following fruitful first steps between 2001 and 2005, North Macedonia’s journey towards EU membership would witness an unexpected period of stagnation until 2022. Though integration through the Association Agreement’s framework would continue, approval for accession negotiations, the prelude to full membership, have been repeatedly delayed by Greece and Bulgaria due to cultural disputes as well as by France, Denmark, and the Netherlands because of wariness concerning the country’s reform progress. While the EU would eventually approve accession negotiations to the country, North Macedonia would indeed face a myriad of challenges along the way.

Having been the only national movement not to realise a nation-state in the Balkan Peninsula after the fall of the Ottoman Empire, North Macedonia (at the time ‘Macedonia’) fell victim to neighbouring influences and annexations throughout the late 19th century and first half of the 20th, particularly by Serbia and Bulgaria. Though Macedonia would regain recognition as a national identity as well as a distinct ethnicity and language through Yugoslavia’s ‘protective umbrella’, national susceptibility would reemerge following its 1992 independence. As independence renewed disputes on linguistic, cultural, and historical heritage between NATO and EU members, Macedonia would soon see NATO and the EU membership inextricably linked to those quarrels.

Greece and the naming dispute

Indeed, Greece would be one of few to delay its recognition of Macedonia’s independence, citing the new country’s name of ‘Macedonia’ as conflicting with Greece’s northern region under the same name. The contention soon resulted in a trade embargo imposed by Greece in 1994, blocking the country from accessing its closest sea trading port, Thessaloniki, resulting in heightened economic strain on Macedonia’s fragile transitional economy. Though the 1995 Interim Accord was brokered to lift the embargo while recognising the Republic of Macedonia under the provisional name of ‘Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia’, the naming dispute would remain unsolved until the late 2010s. However, while Greece agreed under the Accord not to obstruct Macedonia’s application to international bodies as long as it did so under its provisional name, Macedonia became adamant in applying for EU and NATO membership under its constitutional name. In an effort to find a solution before the April 2008 NATO Summit, several negotiations were resumed under the auspices and proposals of the UN and/or the United States, but none found unanimous agreement. Greece therefore vetoed Macedonia’s invitation to NATO during the organisation’s summit in Bucharest.

Thereafter, the Macedonian nationalist VMRO-DPMNE government intensified its policy of Antikvizatzija (‘Antiquisation’), a policy between 2006 and 2017 to strengthen the country’s identitarian link with ancient Macedonia. The policy included renaming stations and airports, erecting statues, and remodelling cities with classical Macedonian symbols and figures such as Alexander the Great and Philip II of Macedon. Understanding that Greece’s northern region of ‘Macedonia’ shared the same historical heritage, Antiquisation was therefore partly viewed as a method by Skopje (Macedonia’s capital) to appropriate Macedonian antiquity and put pressure on Greece over the naming dispute. Nonetheless, the policy not only deteriorated Greek relations but also received criticism from foreign diplomats and academics, as well as domestic criticism from ethnic Albanians within the Republic who viewed it as a method of marginalisation.

In November 2008, a few months after NATO’s Summit in Bucharest, Skopje sued Athens before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on the basis that Greece had violated the Interim Accord of 1995 by preventing Macedonia’s entry into NATO. Delivering its judgement in 2011, the ICJ declared that Greece had indeed violated the Accord. Nevertheless, despite the verdict, Macedonia remained blocked from NATO and EU accession by Greece until 2019.

Despite numerous more unfruitful UN-sponsered negotiations between 2008 and 2017, new momentum for a solution arose following the electoral defeat of VMRO-DPMNE. Skopje, under its new centre-left Social Democrat-led government, agreed to curtail certain Antiquisation policies by the previous nationalist-led government, renaming again streets and locations which had strained Greek-Macedonian relations. In exchange, Greece would ratify the second phase of the EU’s Association Agreement with Macedonia and would resume air travel after a 12 year cessation.

Following various foreign ministerial meetings, by June 2018, an agreement had been reached: Macedonia would now on be named ‘Republic of North Macedonia’ for international and domestic purposes. The agreement culminated with the Prespa Agreement, signed at the countries’ territorial dividing point of Lake Prespa.

Language, history, identity, and Bulgaria

Unlike Greece, Bulgaria became the first country to recognise Macedonia’s independence in 1992. However, ‘Macedonian’ as a distinct ethnicity and language was overlooked, viewing them as a de facto Bulgarian ethnicity and dialect, respectively. Though bilateral disputes between both countries have gone on since North Macedonia’s independence, the public limelight remained on the Greek-Macedonian name dispute until its resolution in 2018. Even so, with certain exceptions, North Macedonian relations with its Bulgarian neighbour have been filled with disputes until 2022.

The first attempt to resolve growing tensions came in 1999. In order to settle Bulgaria’s disputes with the Macedonian language, a controversial Joint Declaration was signed in February 1999 between the allegedly nationalist VMRO-DPMNE Macedonian government and Bulgaria. According to the Declaration, both governments would thereby undertake ‘effective measures for preventing ill-intentioned propaganda’ by organisations and sanction activities by citizens ‘aimed at instigating violence, hatred, or other such actions’ which may harm Bulgarian-Macedonian relations.

Amidst no prior consultation with the Macedonian public or opposition before the Declaration’s signing, the Social Democrats accused VMRO-DPMNE of treason. Indeed, not only had the Declaration been signed and formulated hastily and within 100 days of VMRO-DPMNE coming to power, the phrasing was viewed as ‘particularly dubious when it applies to private citizens (and their freedom of speech)’, according to Macedonian political scholar Biljana Vankovska.

Notwithstanding, once Nikola Gruevski replaced Ljubčo Georgievski as head of VMRO-DPMNE in 2006, Skopje took a more cautious approach at negotiations with Sofia. As Vankovska argues, ‘defence of Macedonian-ness was the key point of his ruling paradigm and ideology’, a more nationalist ideology to his predecessors. It would be Gruevski’s government, after all, who would implement the aforementioned Antiquisation policies of strengthening North Macedonia’s historical heritage to ancient Macedonia. Because of this, only a joint memorandum in 2008 which reaffirmed the previous 1999 Joint Declaration would be the single major bilateral event during Gruevski’s decade-long tenure.

By 2016, political crisis had swept the country, forcing Gruevski to resign upon the backdrop of nation-wide protests accusing the VMRO-DPMNE-led government of various misdeeds. With the event culminating in the electoral victory of the Social Democrat-led coalition, 2016 would witness new momentum for the resolution of the Bulgarian quarrel. In an almost parallel evolution of events to the Greek dispute, negotiations resumed with Bulgaria with new optimism. Zoran Zaev, as the new Prime Minister and as an overt advocate for Europeanisation, quickly attempted to resolve North Macedonia’s prime obstructions to EU accession, namely the Bulgarian and Greek disputes.

In contrast to the preceding nationalistic government, Skopje was now willing to concede to Bulgarian demands if it meant better bilateral relations. Thus, the ‘Treaty of Friendship, Good-Neighbourliness and Cooperation’ was signed in August 2017. In an event which resembled deja vu, the opposition criticised the treaty for its alleged hastiness and secrecy, having been put to a vote only by the parliamentary commission on foreign affairs. Nonetheless, the treaty seemed to have settled Bulgaria’s major disputes.

With Skopje going on to resolve the Greek name dispute the following year, it seemed like the road towards EU accession negotiations was cleared. Yet, in October 2019, France, with the support of Denmark and the Netherlands, vetoed the start of North Macedonia’s and Albania’s accession negotiations. French President Emmanuel Macron would later defend his position by citing the necessity for EU internal reform before further enlargement. Despite the positive recommendations by the Commission on both country’s EU bids, North Macedonia was effectively blocked yet again from further European integration, with then-Commission President Jean Claude Junker calling it ‘a grave historic error’. The decision regarding North Macedonia’s EU accession negotiations would thus be postponed to the following year.

However, to the surprise of many, Bulgaria would go on to veto the next two council meetings on North Macedonia’s EU entry, in November 2020 and October 2021 respectively. Indeed, Sofia had unexpectedly regrown critical of North Macedonia, citing that it had done little to fulfil the 2017 Treaty on Friendship by not allocating enough infrastructure to interconnect the countries and by doing little to carry out the creation of an agreed-upon historical council to solve historical disputes.

By December 2021, however, a new government was elected into Sofia which raised hopefulness on a final resolution to the Macedonian-Bulgarian deteriorating relations. This was further exacerbated with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine at the beginning of 2022 which placed new geopolitical urgency to the situation. As EU High Commissioner Josep Borrel stated on a visit to Skopje in March 2022, ‘the EU should launch negotiations with North Macedonia and Albania as soon as possible to strengthen security in the Western Balkans’. With similar addresses by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, it was evident that the new European geopolitical setting had directly impacted the urgency of North Macedonia’s EU accession.

By mid 2022, France on behalf of the EU had drafted a proposal to settle the Bulgarian dispute with North Macedonia. Under the proposal, North Macedonia would have to concede to further Bulgarian demands and modify its constitution to recognise the country’s Bulgarian minority and sanction hate speech towards Bulgaria. While the Social Democrat government supported the proposal as it would definitively clear the path for EU accession negotiations, the VMRO-DPMNE opposition criticised it for undermining national identity.

The final stretch

Nevertheless, the French compromise was adopted and three days later EU accession negotiations were officially launched for North Macedonia and Albania.

However, North Macedonia’s path towards EU membership is still far from clear. Since North Macedonia’s adoption of the French proposal, social upheaval has been brewing in the country. Euroscepticism has been on the rise and anti-Bulgarian sentiment has been growing. The VMRO-DPMNE opposition, with the support of various other parties such as the far-left nationalist Levica as well as many within civil society have yet to support the redrafting of the constitution to implement the French proposal’s amendments, something which requires two-thirds of parliament backing. If such a redrafting of North Macedonia’s constitution fails, it will effectively mean the halting of the country’s EU bid, not by some veto from Bulgaria, Greece, or another EU country, but by the EU itself. With the Social Democrat-led government holding only a small majority in parliament, it is likely North Macedonia’s road towards EU membership will experience further difficulties.

Conclusion

Since its independence from Yugoslavia in 1992, North Macedonia has continuously desired EU membership, albeit with oscillating commitment in solving the obstacles that lay before it. Even so, EU membership has never been easy in the past for any country who has sought and achieved it. Still, North Macedonia has been an interesting case, with its road to membership being one scarred not primarily by the conventional economic or structural challenges, but by language, identity, and historical heritage. The small country of no more than 2 million has indeed had to compromise on much to simply be accepted to EU accession negotiations: its name, historical heritage, language, national identity, and arguably freedom of speech. Though future EU membership is still not yet certain for North Macedonia, its journey so far has indeed been one carved by sacrificial compromise and strenuousness.