North Macedonia will not train a new judge or prosecutor for at least two years. This is because, the admission call for the judicial academy latest generation was canceled at the end of 2025, due to funding shortages and legal changes, and since training takes two years, no new graduates can reach the courts before 2028.
The benches they are supposed to fill are already understaffed. According to the European Commission 2026, Rule of law report, around one in three judicial posts is vacant, and nearly one in five of the judges still serving will reach retirement age by the end of 2028. Just as a generation of judges prepares to leave, no one is being trained to replace them.
These major issues are just one side of a problem that goes beyond the justice system itself. Namely, a justice system short of people, short of money, and short of public trust is one of the main openings through which private and political interests might capture the state. And a captured state is a vulnerable one, to both internal and external risks.
Underfunded and under pressure
Lack of funding is certainly the number one challenge for the judiciary. The Macedonian law sets clear funding targetsat 0.8% of GDP for the courts and 0.4% of the state budget for the prosecution. However, in practice, the courts receive about a third of that amount and the prosecution about half. Consequently, the insufficient budgets undermine the independence of the judiciary and the autonomy of the prosecution.
Control over money, in effect, determines the control over the judiciary. Courts and prosecution offices need the ministry of finance’s approval for their internal budget decisions, including employment. A reform that would move this power to the judiciary is planned, but not yet in force. Until then, the executive branch has a direct say over how the judiciary is staffed and managed. A court that needs a ministry’s consent for its next appointment can not be fully independent, regardless of its formal status.
The prosecution has faced direct political pressure too. For instance, the government sought to dismiss the Chief Public Prosecutor, despite a negative opinion from the Council of Public Prosecutors; The Chief Public Prosecutor resigned, before the Parliament could vote on the proposal. Later, on a separate instance, a prosecutor handling two cases on alleged illegal financing of the ruling party, when removed by the State Public Prosecutor from those particular cases, resigned citing political pressure in the resignation. One of those cases ended in acquittal of a former prime minister in the retrial. The Skopje Criminal Court noted that while the evidence was unchanged, the 2023 Criminal Code amendments had removed the legal grounds for prosecution and for confiscating the party headquarters.
The public discourse about the judiciary has worsened as well, influencing the overall image. Senior government officials have publicly accused judges and prosecutors of corruption and announced plans to “clean up” the judiciary. In response, the Judicial Council, the Supreme Court and the Association of Judges issued a joint statement warning that such attacks undermine judicial independence and the separation of powers.
A deficit of trust
Public confidence in the judiciary is extremely low, and both expert and citizen surveys point to the same conclusion.
SELDI expert assessment and diagnostic of state capture (SCAD) from 2026, highlights that 95% of expert respondents reported improper political influence on North Macedonia’s justice system, and 89% reported improper private influence. These are the highest shares in the region of the Western Balkans, slightly ahead of Serbia (90% and 83%respectively), even though Serbia scores worse on overall state capture.
From the side of citizens experience, the Corruption Monitoring System (CMS), shows similar perceptions among citizens. Judges were the professional group most often perceived as corrupt in the country, with 79% of citizen respondents saying that almost all or most judges are involved in corruption, followed by prosecutors 74.6%.
At the institutional level, courts also remain at the top in terms of perceived corruption proliferation. Courts and the prosecution also received the lowest levels of trust when citizens were asked which institutions can address corruption.
What is interesting, at the same time, the same survey shows that trust in the government has almost doubled since 2023. Confidence in the executive and in the judiciary appear to be moving in different directions. Multiple factors may be behind such perceptions, yet one likely explanation is that citizens often form their views on corruption largely from media coverage and public debate rather than through direct experience alone.
Slow proceedings and low number of convictions in high-profile cases accompanied with repeated attacks on the judiciary by government officials, all shape that perception and trust building.
Trust nonetheless matters, since public confidence is one of the foundations of judicial independence.
From weak courts to a captured state
Why an independent judiciary matters? Because courts are one of the mechanisms of defence against state capture.
State capture is, in essence, the privatisation of public authority. Political and business actors bend the laws, the enforcement and the oversight in order to extract private benefit from state institutions or resources. Unlike commonly known corruption, which is often episodic, state capture is systemic and self-reinforcing. In very simple terms, it requires control over institutions and budgets, rules adjusted to narrow interests and impunity.
The judiciary is exactly where impunity is either stopped or guaranteed. According to the State capture assessment and diagnostic (SCAD) scoreboard, where zero means full institutional independence and hundred means complete capture, North Macedonia scores 63.6. That places the country just below the “red zone” where capture becomes structural, a zone Bosnia and Herzegovina (75.0) and Serbia (71.5) already occupy. The judicial dimension of capture scores (65.7), which is the highest of the country’s three branches of power.
The pattern leading to state capture enabled through a vulnerable judiciary is very obvious. Understaffed courts cannot finish complex cases in time, including high-level proceedings. Underfunded prosecutors cannot build the court cases. Amending and adjusting the laws allows for avoiding accountability and ensuring impunity. And a public that already distrusts judges is unlikely to protest when the system is weakened further. Each gap makes the next one easier.
Why a weak judiciary is a security risk
In the current geopolitical context, exposed and weak judiciary is not only a domestic governance problem, it is also a security vulnerability.
When political-business networks control key institutions, economic resources and information flows, they become an easy point of entry for outside actors, like Russia or China, which continuously exploit the already existing local patronage networks into geopolitical leverage.
North Macedonia is not immune to outside pressure. A July 2025 European Parliament resolution warned that the country remains a target of foreign malign influence operations, including efforts to weaponise anti-EU sentiment through Serbian-language tabloids that amplify Kremlin narratives. Expert participants in the SCAD research rate media capture in the country at 64%, and a captured media readily amplify foreign narratives as well as domestic ones.
Courts have important role here because they are the institution which can hold power accountable, scrutinize a suspicious contract, order the confiscation of illicit assets, or rule against a politically connected investor. Besides accountability, exposure of the judiciary is another capture enabling aspect. A justice system that cannot reliably hold power to account leaves the door open, for domestic and foreign interests.
The erosion of trust is another issue. According to the CMS findings, two in three citizens or 66.6% of citizen respondents believe corruption cannot be significantly reduced in the future and 78.9% consider that corruption pressure is very likely to continue. That kind of pessimism among the public creates tolerance of corruption, higher rates of acceptability and involvement in corruption. For the creation of democratic resilience, this may be the most worrying finding. A society that no longer expects accountability is less likely to demand it, and easier to influence.
What building resilience would require
Rule of law cannot be treated as a technical condition in the reform process towards EU accession, or as a condition to relax when geopolitics shifts happen. It is the strongest protection North Macedonia has against outside powers and local interests, shaping the country through the institutions they control.
For the judiciary, building that protection requires appointments based on merit, courts and prosecutors having sufficient and independent budgets, so they can plan for the long term, anti-corruption bodies with real independence, and scrutiny from outside the system. Harmonization of laws in line with key EU regulations and directives, like the recently adopted Anti-corruption Directive, is another necessary step to ensure legal checks and balances.
The EU has a role too. Brussels should stop rewarding laws that exist only on paper and start measuring what changesare achieved in practice. For instance, number of convictions in high-level cases, assets recovered, and action on suspicious asset declarations, could be some of the indicators. The support provided under the Reform and Growth Facility should follow verified progress, not promises made by leaders.In the end, the question is very simple.
Will North Macedonia’s courts be able to hold accountable those with power, money or foreign backing? Every unfilled vacancy, every unfunded court and every year the judicial academy stays closed makes that answer less certain.
Over the next years, the justice system will either strengthen the country’s democracy or become an exposed weakness open for exploitation.
This article was published as part of the project “Civil society for good governance and anti-corruption in southeast Europe: Capacity building for monitoring, advocacy and awareness-raising (SELDI)” funded by the European Union.
