Journey to EU membership a ‘road with no end’ for North Macedonia

Nikola Jazadziski has grown up in North Macedonia hearing talk of the small Balkan country’s prospects of hopefully joining the European Union.

Now 29 with a master’s degree in politics and working for the civil society organisation European Movement, he feels his country’s path towards coveted EU membership has become to look like “a road with no end”.

“We are not saying we should enter the EU tomorrow, but we need to start the process, the process needed to be started 10 years ago,” he says.

The small team of the North Macedonian branch of European Movement, which works to promote EU integration, often meets to discuss plans in an Irish bar near the centre of Skopje, the capital city. Talking over a coffee in one corner of the pub on a Saturday in mid-January, Jazadziski says North Macedonia’s EU aspirations have been “blocked at the start”.

Locks, chains, diversions: How Columbia students seized Hamilton Hall

---

China’s Xi Jinping to begin Europe visit amid tensions over industrial policy and Ukraine war

---

English local elections show Labour’s poll lead is bang on

---

The country applied to join the European bloc in 2004 and was granted candidate status the following year. However, from there moves to open up accession talks were put on ice for years, due to opposition from one of its neighbours.

Greece vetoed negotiations starting due to a decades-long dispute over the country’s then name, Macedonia, which the Greeks said implied a territorial claim over its province of the same name. As a result, five years ago the country changed its name to the Republic of North Macedonia, clearing the way for the lengthy EU membership negotiations, which began in 2022.

However, after the dispute with Greece was put to bed Bulgaria put its hand up, vetoing accession talks over demands North Macedonia’s constitution is changed to recognise the country’s Bulgarian minority. The name change and now the proposed amendments to the constitution have hurt the popularity of the government, a coalition led by the Social Democrats (SDSM), Jazadziski says.

The ability of EU member states to veto new countries opening negotiations to enter the bloc was a “serious loophole” that had been abused by some for domestic political reasons, he says.

“If I am honest I think if we were a regular country in central Europe we would have been in the European Union by now,” he says. Support for joining the EU has dropped among Macedonians, as voices opposing integration become louder.

Eurothink, a Skopje-based think tank, has been measuring attitudes to the EU in the country for the last decade. Executive director Dimitar Nikolovski (37) says surveys have shown increasing “frustrations” with the accession process. The change of the country’s name was a “breaking point” for a lot of people, who viewed it as an attack on their identity, he says.

“Up until 2021 Eurothink polls showed support for EU membership running at 70 per cent, which in recent years had dropped to around 50 per cent ... It has really fallen down. There is a fatigue among Macedonian citizens,” he says.

“In 2005 we were discussing membership and [saying] the latest it will be by 2012, and then in 2012 we were saying the latest it will be 2020. It’s a moving target,” he says. While the EU club might be more open to taking in new members towards the end of this decade, that does not mean North Macedonia will have its “homework” done on necessary reforms by then, he adds.

During a recent visit to the west Balkan country, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said he would like to see the country join the EU within the next five years.

Jazadziski says he would be very surprised if that timeline came to pass. “I don’t believe we can enter the EU in five years or the end of the decade, I think it’s longer; if we do it I will be really shocked positively,” he says.

The stalled process led to a previous “generation” of talented people who had been pushing internal reforms to leave the country or pursue careers in other sectors, he says. Even if there was progress on reforms required to join the EU, there was a fear there “will always be something new” holding up North Macedonia’s entry. “It feels like a road with no end,” he says.

The opposition, VMRO-DPMNE, a nationalist party which took a harder line on the name change and constitutional concessions to Bulgaria, is widely expected to win parliamentary elections this May.

Walking through the centre of Skopje tourists are struck by one of the more visible legacies of the party’s previous decade in power, which ended in 2017. A huge bronze statue of Alexander the Great on a horse is one of several monuments that are not from centuries ago but relatively recent additions. The statues and buildings were part of a controversial facelift of the city, dubbed Skopje 2014, which drew criticism over its kitsch aesthetic and the cost of the project.

Prof Slagjana Taseva, chair of Transparency International Macedonia, says the building programme was an example of the “politicised public administration” that characterised VMRO-DPMNE’s time in government.

The current government has made more of an effort at tackling corruption than its predecessors, Nikolovski says.

The issue was “the number one problem in the country”, which ranged from “petty” instances in ordinary people’s day-to-day lives to serious cases involving the judiciary, he says. “The police are doing something, the prosecution are doing something and then it gets stuck in the courts. The courts are definitely the weakest link in the system,” he says.

A European Commission report last year found corruption remained “prevalent in many areas” of the former Yugoslav republic. When asked to rate the scale of the problem one diplomatic source put the level of corruption in North Macedonia as broadly similar to other countries in the region.

Locals describe anecdotal cases of people making payments to get moved up a hospital waiting list, passing a driving test on the first attempt, and fast-tracking requests to renew official documents. The last example has become more common given the need for everyone to replace their identity cards and passports following the country’s name change, leading to months-long delays waiting to secure new documents without cash being placed into the right palm.

“Everything is connected, if people are poorer they look for how to make their living better and so you have corruption. Corruption is currently from the bartender up to the highest institutions,” Jazadziski says.

Dimitar Kovačevski, the current prime minister, told a press conference after his meeting with Varadkar that addressing corruption was “a never-ending fight”. It was important that when cases were identified they were prosecuted, he told Irish and Macedonian media. “Corruption can be found everywhere, even in the European Parliament,” he added.

Widespread corruption is also one of the main reasons young people give when asked why they want to emigrate, says Teodora Stolevska, executive director of Youth Educational Forum.

“We’re facing a huge wave of brain drain here ... It’s not that there is no work opportunities, it’s just that there is no quality jobs available,” the director of the youth organisation says. Entry into the EU would bring economic development and in turn better job prospects for young people, but Stolevska says she is sceptical about whether North Macedonia “will ever get there”.

It had been nearly 20 years since the country had sought to start the process, which she says did not inspire confidence for the future: “There are people who were born at the same time, they’re becoming adults now. There’s still no light at the end of the tunnel that we’re getting into the European Union”.

• Sign up for push alerts and have the best news, analysis and comment delivered directly to your phone
• Find The Irish Times on WhatsApp and stay up to date
• Our In The News podcast is now published daily – Find the latest episode here