Abstract

North Macedonia has been an EU candidate since 2005; however, accession negotiations remain stalled due to bilateral disputes with Greece and Bulgaria over its name, identity, and history. After resolving its name dispute with Greece through the 2018 Prespa Agreement, the country faced a new obstacle when Bulgaria vetoed its negotiating framework in 2020. A compromise was reached in 2022, but progress still hinges on contested constitutional changes. North Macedonia's case points to a broader problem: EU member states can use the accession process to settle historical scores, and the EU has no consistent way to stop them.

Introduction

Nearly two decades after receiving candidate status in December 2005, North Macedonia has yet to advance beyond the opening stages of EU accession negotiations, and its path to membership remains highly uncertain (European Commission, 2026; StrategErs, 2025). While the country made significant progress on political and economic reforms, bilateral disputes with Greece and Bulgaria repeatedly delayed or reshaped its trajectory (Clingendael Institute, 2024; Fouéré, 2023; Uilenreef, 2010). 

This brief argues that North Macedonia's experience illustrates how member state veto power can turn the EU enlargement process – the formal procedure through which candidate countries adopt EU law and standards and, once deemed ready, accede to full membership – into a vehicle for settling historical grievances that fall outside the formal membership criteria. In the case of North Macedonia, structural reform and policy alignment are insufficient to guarantee progress when a single member state can block accession for reasons unrelated to a candidate’s compliance with EU standards. The central lesson for other candidate states, including Serbia and Kosovo, is that unresolved bilateral disputes will be imported into the accession process; the EU should therefore consider reforming the unanimity requirement in enlargement decisions or alternatively introduce independent arbitration mechanisms, so that membership conditionality remains distinct from member-state political objectives.

From Independence to “North Macedonia”: A Brief History

Following the dissolution of Yugoslavia, the newly independent Republic of Macedonia sought international recognition. Greece objected to both its constitutional name and symbols, such as the Star of Vergina – a symbol Greece considers part of its own ancient Macedonian heritage – on the grounds that their use implied territorial claims over the Greek region of Macedonia and appropriated Greek cultural identity. Given EU enlargement and many admissions processes for international organizations requiring unanimous or consensus-based agreement among existing members, Greece’s position was sufficient to block or delay recognition in key multilateral forums. The new state’s international standing was therefore contingent on resolving a dispute it had not anticipated at independence. The United Nations Security Council admitted the state under the provisional reference "the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia" in Resolution 817, a compromise that reflected a dispute rooted in questions of identity, historical heritage, and good-neighbourly relations that would remain unresolved for more than two decades (United Nations Security Council, 1993; Karakamisheva-Jovanovska, 2018).

On 17 June 2018, foreign ministers of Greece and the still officially-named Republic of Macedonia signed the Prespa Agreement, a final settlement designed to resolve the name issue (Karakamisheva-Jovanovska, 2018; QIL QDI, 2018). Under Prespa, the country amended its constitution to adopt the name "Republic of North Macedonia" for all internal and external purposes, in exchange for Greece's commitment not to block its accession to NATO and the EU, allowing North Macedonia’s NATO membership to be finalised on 27 March 2020 (NATO, 2020; U.S. Department of State, 2020).

EU Accession Progress and Conditionality

North Macedonia submitted its application for EU membership in March 2004, and the European Council granted it candidate status in December 2005 (European Commission, 2026; BalcaniCaucaso, 2005). The European Commission first recommended opening accession negotiations in 2009, but the Council only gave political agreement in March 2020, and the first intergovernmental conference was held in July 2022 (European Commission, 2026; European Western Balkans, 2020a; European Commission, 2023).

Recent Commission reports describe North Macedonia as broadly aligned with the EU's Common Foreign and Security Policy and note progress in public administration reform, the judiciary, and anti-corruption efforts, but also stress remaining weaknesses in the rule of law and economic competitiveness (European Commission, 2023, 2025a). Under the Reform and Growth Facility Regulation – the EU’s dedicated financial instrument for supporting Western Balkan candidates through pre-accession reforms – the EU and North Macedonia agreed on a Reform Agenda setting out the policy commitments and milestones against which the funding would be distributed. The country received performance-based grants in 2025 once specific reform milestones were met (European Commission, 2025b, Regulation (EU) 2024/1449). 

Despite this, the opening of the first negotiation cluster – known as "Fundamentals", which covers rule of law, judicial independence, and the functioning of democratic institutions, and which the EU treats as the foundation that must be in place before other chapters can progress – remains blocked. The specific obstacle is North Macedonia’s failure to complete constitutional amendments required under the 2022 French proposal, namely the formal inclusion of Bulgarians as constituent people in its constitution. Until those amendments pass, the EU will not open the cluster, meaning that a bilateral political commitment made to secure Bulgaria’s veto lift is now controlling the entire pace of accession (European Commission, 2023, 2025a; Clingendael Institute, 2024).

Disputes with Greece and Bulgaria

Greece and the Prespa Breakthrough

For many years, Greece blocked North Macedonia’s integration into both NATO and the EU by vetoing the accession invitations and negotiations that required unanimous member state support. The Prespa Agreement addressed the entire scope of the dispute, as North Macedonia committed to changing its constitutional name, renouncing any territorial claims on the Greek region of Macedonia, and revising state symbols, including removing the Star of Vergina from official use. Greece in turn committed to withdrawing its objections to North Macedonia's membership bids in international organisations. (QIL QDI, 2018; Center for Strategic and International Studies [CSIS], 2019).

Bulgaria’s Veto and the “French Proposal”

After the Prespa breakthrough, enlargement was again slowed when Bulgaria blocked the adoption of the EU negotiating framework in 2020 (Legal Political Studies, 2020). Sofia framed its veto around the 2017 Treaty of Friendship, Good-Neighbourliness and Cooperation between Bulgaria and North Macedonia, effectively using the unanimity rule in enlargement to pursue bilateral objectives. Bulgaria specifically demanded that North Macedonia formally recognize the shared Bulgarian roots of the Macedonian language and acknowledge the Bulgarian minority within its borders before accession can proceed (Legal Political Studies, 2020).

In mid-2022, under the French Presidency of the Council of the EU – the institution that adopts EU law and coordinates policy – a compromise package commonly called the "French proposal" was crafted, which Bulgaria's parliament endorsed as a basis for lifting the veto (European Western Balkans, 2022a, 2022b). The proposal required North Macedonia to amend its constitution to include Bulgarians as a constituent people alongside Macedonians, Albanians, and other communities. It also embedded regular bilateral reviews of good-neighbourly relations and minority rights into the accession process itself, meaning that North Macedonia's treatment of its Bulgarian minority and its adherence to bilateral commitments toward Bulgaria would be assessed as part of each annual EU progress report. Bulgaria used the concept of good-neighbourly relations, a standard EU enlargement requirement, to demand that North Macedonia accept a specific reading of shared history and acknowledge a linguistic and ethnic kinship that North Macedonia contests. (European Western Balkans, 2022a, 2022b; Euronews, 2022).

Constitutional amendments remain incomplete, and until they are adopted the first negotiating cluster cannot open (European Commission, 2023, 2025a; Clingendael Institute, 2024). This pattern matches broader research showing that bilateral disputes became a significant barrier to EU enlargement in the Western Balkans, as member states increasingly use veto power to seek concessions on identity, history, and minority issues that go beyond the formal acquis communautaire – the body of EU law and standards that candidates are actually required to adopt – and into domestic political terrain the accession progress was never designed to adjudicate (Uilenreef, 2010; Fouéré, 2023; European Council on Foreign Relations [ECFR], 2024).

Conclusion: Implications for Other Candidates and Outlook

North Macedonia's trajectory illustrates the risks of making EU accession progress heavily dependent on the resolution of identity-laden bilateral disputes: it can weaken the credibility of conditionality by shifting focus from clear technical criteria to politically sensitive demands (Fouéré, 2023; ECFR, 2024). Analysts call for mechanisms that address bilateral issues in parallel to, rather than inside, the formal negotiation framework (Uilenreef, 2010; ECFR, 2024).

The North Macedonian case also illustrates a broader pattern across the Western Balkans and the European Neighbourhood: bilateral disputes over identity, borders, and historical recognition increasingly determine the pace of accession regardless of how well candidates perform on formal EU criteria (Uilenreef, 2010; Bieber & Kmezić, 2023). Kosovo's path remains blocked by non-recognition within the EU itself, while Serbia's accession is effectively conditioned on a political settlement with Pristina that neither side is currently willing to conclude (Clingendael Institute, 2024; ECFR, 2024). For the EU, the lesson from North Macedonia is that credible enlargement requires demanding reforms from candidates and developing consistent mechanisms to prevent member states from embedding bilateral grievances into the accession framework — a reform that is, at present, still absent (European Commission, 2023, 2025a; ECFR, 2024).