Anticipating the October 2019 European Council Summit: Make or Break for North Macedonia’s EU Accession?

Anticipating the October 2019 European Council Summit: Make or Break for North Macedonia’s EU Accession?

When the European Council decided to grant the status of a candidate country for EU membership to North Macedonia in 2005, nobody could have expected that almost 15 years later the country would still be in the waiting room for the start of accession negotiations for EU membership. In 2009, the European Commission adopted its first recommendation for the start of accession negotiations between the European Union (EU) and North Macedonia. Eleven consecutive recommendations later, North Macedonia is anxiously waiting for the October 2019 meeting of the European Council as the first plausible opportunity in more than a decade to reach the much-coveted goal.

The biggest reason for this hiatus in North Macedonia’s EU accession path has been the long-standing dispute with Greece over the usage of (at the time) its constitutional name of Republic of Macedonia.  In 2008, Greece broke the obligation of the Interim accord between the two countries not to object Macedonian membership in international organizations of whom it is a member of and decided to effectively block the Macedonian accession process into NATO and the EU. This decision has had a very damaging effect on the Macedonian EU accession process in particular, but also on the overall state of democracy in the country. The significantly lowered credibility of the promise of EU membership slowed down political and administrative efforts of compliance with EU acquis criteria. At the same time, the massive public support for EU membership started to gradually decline, despite the lack of significant Eurosceptic political parties and societal actors. These developments converged with and empowered the authoritarian tendencies of the VMRO DPMNE-DUI backed government led by prime minister Nikola Gruevski, whose blend of populist and illiberal policies triggered a process of democratic backsliding and further strained relations with Greece and the EU. A massive political and societal crisis in the country which erupted in 2015 instigated by the wiretapping scandal which was revealed by (at the time) opposition leader Zoran Zaev, exposed the extent of state capture and corruption in the government and forced the political elites in power to enter an EU-brokered process of negotiations with the opposition which resulted with institutional reform of the judicial system and new elections which ultimately brought a change of government, now led by the social democrat Zoran Zaev.

Initially, the new government delivered on the promise to boost the euroatlantic perspectives of the country in a dramatic fashion, by focusing on removing the biggest obstacle, the name dispute. After several months of intensive negotiations, the governments in Skopje and Athens reached a deal on changing the constitutional name of the country into North Macedonia which was enshrined in the Prespa agreement, signed in June 2018. Although the subsequent consultative referendum on the adoption of the Prespa agreement was marred by low turnout, an overwhelming majority of more than 600000 citizens who voted, supported the changing of the name on the pretext that it will open the path towards EU and NATO membership. Besides the outcome of the referendum, the provisions of the Prespa agreement were adopted by the Macedonian Parliament in a controversial process of Constitutional changes in January 2019. With the ratification of the Prespa agreement in the Greek Parliament in the same month, presumably the biggest hurdle on North Macedonia’s euroatlantic integration path has been removed, as Greece vouched to lift its blockade and openly support the country’s NATO and EU accession. 

The resolution of the name dispute has undoubtedly managed to advance the credibility of North Macedonia’s euroatlantic integration aspirations and to a certain extent put the EU accession process back on track. However, these dynamics didn’t completely deliver on the expected results. While on one hand, NATO membership is on the horizon, the EU accession progress is faced with many uncertainties. Despite high expectations based on the incentives provided by the resolution of the naming dispute and significant diplomatic pressure, the European Council didn’t deliver on the promise of many EU politicians to approve the start of accession negotiations between the EU and North Macedonia in its June 2018 Summit, as it decided to prolong its decision for a year, after the conclusion of the European Parliament elections in 2019. Nonetheless, the negative effects of the postponement of the start of accession negotiations have been partially offset with the decision to fill the one-year void with the implementation of the European Commission-led explanatory screening process of technical evaluation of the preparedness of the Macedonian administration for accession negotiations. One year later, despite a strong endorsement from the European Commission and majority of member states, the European Council in June 2019 once again decided to postpone the decision to start accession negotiations for October 2019. However, a positive decision in October 2019 is far from certain, as both external and internal factors could have negative effects on the outcome.

The biggest obstacle is the dissonance within the European Council on how to proceed forward with EU enlargement. Both postponements of the decision on whether to start accession negotiations have been instigated by reservations from a minority of member states spearheaded by France and the Netherlands. French president Macron’s insistence that the EU should focus on internal reforms of the EU decision making system before it engages in further enlargement endeavors and the firm Dutch demands for effective rule of law reforms in the candidate countries could have a determinative effect on the outcomes of the October 2019 European Council deliberations.  Moreover, the prospects of obtaining a positive decision in October 2019 could be potentially shattered by recent developments on the domestic Macedonian scene. Namely, North Macedonia has been hit by a shocking scandal of high-level extortion of funds from businessmen under prosecution which allegedly involves high ranking members of the judiciary and, as rumored in the media, politicians from the ruling party. At the moment of the writing of this article, the scandal culminated with the arrest of the Chief Special Public Persecutor Katica Janeva, the very person that was supposed to lead the fight against corruption in the aftermath of the wiretapping scandal. These developments have put the Macedonian judicial system under its biggest test. Conversely, the next steps in the resolution of the scandal could also determine the immediate faith of North Macedonia’s EU accession aspirations, as failure could serve as a perfect excuse for skeptical member states to block or postpone again the opening of accession negotiations.

In many ways, the outcome of the October 2019 European Council Summit could frame the reform and democratic consolidation prospects of North Macedonia for the foreseeable future. On one hand, a positive result would significantly increase the credibility of the accession process and serve as a key incentive for accelerated compliance with EU criteria. From a political standpoint, the reward of opening accession negotiations with the EU should bring more stability to a political arena that has been hit by a succession of political crises that have ruptured the political and societal cohesion in the country in the past decade. A positive outcome would bring back the Europeanisation agenda at the top of the political debate and limit the rise of Eurosceptic energy in the country. As the promise of reward becomes higher, it could be expected that the political elites will be motivated to overcome the costs of accession and more substantially support compliance with the political criteria of the EU. In addition, a positive decision to open the accession negotiations would further relax the inter-ethnic relations in the country as the goal of EU membership has as always been perceived as the biggest cohesive element in the political agendas of virtually all ethnic groups in North Macedonia.

Even more, there is a high probability that the opening of accession negotiations would enhance the performance of the public administration in relation to compliance with the EU acquis. North Macedonia already has a fairly good record of transposition of EU norms, especially in relation to where it is at the moment in the accession trajectory. As a recent study has shown, besides a decade-long stagnation of the accession process which has been marred with lack of motivation and politicization of the public administration, North Macedonia has a compliance portfolio that equals or in some cases even tops the compliance records of Montenegro and Serbia which have already been engaged in accession negotiations with the EU for years.[1] Having been introduced early in the accession process, North Macedonia has been able to establish a relatively well functioning institutional set-up for legal harmonization of EU norms which has recently been further upgraded with the introduction of the posts of political and technical Chief Negotiators and a corresponding negotiating structure. However, the low credibility of the EU accession process in the past decade has slowed down the administrative performance, so the opening of accession negotiations could provide a decisive incentive for further streamlining of the administrative outputs. In this sense, increased political pressure coupled with the agenda-setting effects of the accession negotiations’ benchmarking system and the EU’s ‘new approach’ towards accession negotiations which emphasizes rule of law reform should induce satisfactory compliance returns on a short and mid-term basis.

On the other hand, a European Council decision not to grant opening of the accession negotiations would most certainly instigate another spiral of uncertainty and stagnation of North Macedonia’s EU accession reform processes. A negative outcome would most probably signify the end of Zoran Zaev’s government whose political capital has been invested in the promise of a significant leap in the country’s EU accession status. Although in such a scenario, the opposition parties would most probably focus their campaign on the domestic failures of the government and its inability to deliver on the promise of accession negotiations, there is a risk that they will also try to utilize the possible rise of Eurosceptic energy in Macedonian society. In this context, the identity-based implications of the adoption of the Prespa agreement have already brought deep divisions in the ethnic Macedonian core of North Macedonia’s society. As the promise of advancement in the country’s EU accession has been used by both domestic and EU politicians as the key argument for the acceptance of the Prespa agreement, any further delay in the advancement of the country’s EU accession status would undoubtedly provide a justifiable ground for rising Euroscepticism. Furthermore, a negative outcome from the October 2019 European Council meeting would have a negative effect on overall compliance with the acquis. Without the necessary motivation and the external impulse that is provided by the EU negotiating framework, we could expect a status quo situation in administrative performance regarding compliance with EU rules.

Finally, reluctance of the European Council to open accession negotiations with North Macedonia (and Albania) could also have significant regional implications. It would significantly diminish the credibility and the leverage of the European Union in the Western Balkans and it would send a message to other aspirant countries that the EU does not fulfill its promises in times when the region greatly needs its help and thus, it does not reward the difficult steps taken by the EU-oriented governments. Such outcome would make it even more difficult for governments and countries to engage in resolving bilateral issues. The Macedonian experience in the past 15 years has shown us that its political agency is strongly responsive to structures of external incentives and its capacity to overcome its biggest challenges has become increasingly tied to EU facilitation and the credibility of the accession perspective. Hence, the European Council should have in mind that the benefits from a positive decision to open accession negotiations with North Macedonia outweigh the presumed costs for the EU.