BELGRADE – Inserting bilateral disputes in the EU accession of North Macedonia significantly damaged the process and the current EU-North Macedonia negotiating framework, which includes the conditioning set by Bulgaria, is not sustainable. Meanwhile, there are some encouraging signs that the EU has become more aware of the risks of bilateral disputes for its credibility in other cases.
These were the main conclusions of the participants of today’s panel “Navigating Challenges: How Bilateral Disputes influence Domestic Reforms in North Macedonia’s EU Journey” at the Belgrade Security Conference 2024.
Marko Troshanovski, President of the Skopje-based Institute for Democracy highlighted the damage that bilateral issues caused to the EU integration of North Macedonia. He said that the majority of the population still favours the EU – 60-65% but it is much lower than at the start of the accession in 2004-2005 when it was more than 90% and it is getting worse every year.
“Surveys also show that fewer and fewer people believe that genuine reforms will lead to progress in the accession process”, Troshanovski said.
He also assessed that the entire mobilization of the civil society and some political parties when it comes to EU integration process that existed around 2018 was killed and deprived of essence with the 2019 French veto and the subsequent Bulgarian veto starting in 2020.
Malinka Ristevska Jordanova, a member of the Security Council of North Macedonia, pointed out that all the political elites believed that all “yeses” to the bilateral demands would pass as European reforms while the actual reforms were put aside, and not only put aside, but there was serious backsliding.
Ristevska Jordanova also added that while the EU never said that complying with bilateral disputes constituted reforms, there was confusion in its public communication. It also became hard for civil society and other actors to talk about the fundamentals of the accession process.
“There is no magic stick but the process as it is conceived now, with the current negotiating framework, which is very different from all others, is not sustainable. At least some elements of merit have to be included in the process. Otherwise, this is not the same process. We are in a totally different process”, Ristevska Jordanova said.
She also expressed her opinion that Bulgaria and North Macedonia cannot finish the job themselves and that other EU member states need to get involved.
Jana Faktor Juzová, Senior Research Fellow at EUROPEUM Institute for European Policy, assessed that the experience with Bulgaria and North Macedonia served as a wake-up call for many in the EU about the dangers of bilateral disputes for credibility.
She also pointed out the German-Slovenian proposal to decide by qualified majority vote, and not unanimity, on the intermediary steps of the accession process, as an encouraging sign in this regard.
“The most recent example is the response of (Enlargement Commissioner-designate) Marta Kos in the European Parliament – it was clear that she sees this as an important issue and that she thinks that this should be done outside the enlargement”, Jana Faktor Juzová said.