The Accession Negotiations of North Macedonia to the EU: Between New Methodology and Old Challenges

Kolaković-Bojović, Milica and Simonovski, Ivica (2023) The Accession Negotiations of North Macedonia to the EU: Between New Methodology and Old Challenges. In: International scientific conference "Law between the ideal and the reality". Faculty of Law ; Institute for Comparative Law, Priština ; Belgrade, pp. 103-115. ISBN 978-86-6083-087-8

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Abstract

Seventeen years long struggle of North Macedonia to open its accession negotiations with EU, finally resulted in the Intergovernmental Conference held on July 19th, 2022. Differently from any other candidate country, to make a procedural progress in its way, however, the country must change its constitution, which is the obligation arising from the bilateral agreement with Bulgaria, based on the proposal of French president Macron. While waiting for the outcome of such a procedure, North Macedonia has started the screening process in order to get a clear position of European Commission on the current state of play of the domestic legislation, institutional and administrative capacities as well as implementation/ enforcement track record, all against the relevant EU acquis and applicable standards. On its accession path, North Macedonia is obliged to comply with the 2020 enhanced EU accession methodology which brings a set of novelties in comparison with the “old methodology” applied to the candidate countries that have passed through the initial accession steps a decade ago, but also accepted to adapt to the new rules. Analyzing all aspects of the new, ie. enhanced negotiation methodology, and especially the specific role of Cluster 1, the authors in this paper also consider the necessary preconditions to be met by North Macedonia to hold the demanding pass of reform processes in accordance with the new methodology.

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