For North Macedonia, The Road To The EU Is A Bitter Slog

Nearly 17 years after having been granted EU candidate status, North Macedonia finally looks set to start EU accession negotiations.

After three days of debate, lawmakers on July 16 backed a French proposal to remove a Bulgarian veto on EU membership talks for the Balkan nation.

The compromise envisages an effort to amend the Macedonian Constitution to recognize a Bulgarian minority but leaves other previous sticking points to be worked out between Skopje and Sofia. It reportedly leaves open Bulgarian recognition of the Macedonian language.

It should be a cause for celebration, not only for Skopje, but also for a European Union that finally appears to have jolted its enlargement process back to life.

Yet the decades-old diplomatic back-and-forth will likely leave a bitter aftertaste -- and, worse still, might even set the tone for North Macedonia's future negotiations with the bloc.

EU hopefuls from other Western Balkans countries -- as well the newly minted candidate countries of Moldova and Ukraine -- might well learn a thing or two from North Macedonia when it comes to charting their own paths toward Brussels.

What this ongoing saga has shown candidate countries is that making reforms domestically to meet the EU's standards is not enough. More important, perhaps, is sorting out any lingering bilateral issues with EU member states that could potentially scupper a bid.

Few countries have had to undergo quite so many challenges as North Macedonia has in its quest to join Western organizations. The biggest came in 2019 when Macedonia changed its name to North Macedonia to settle a dispute with its southern neighbor, Greece, paving the way for Skopje's admission into NATO in 2020.

With the name change, the country's EU accession process could have been started there and then, but instead North Macedonia and Albania, whose EU accession bids are linked, had to wait one more year as France was unhappy with how the bloc's general enlargement process was designed.

To appease Paris, Brussels made a few cosmetic changes, even though many EU diplomats grumbled that the delay had more to do with French President Emmanuel Macron's nervousness around local elections back home.

Then came the Bulgarian objections to North Macedonia's EU bid, which for the last few years have blocked the start of accession talks. Sofia's main concerns are the slow progress of the implementation of the Friendship Treaty signed between the two states in 2017; the alleged repression of the Bulgarian minority in North Macedonia; and the origin and status of the Macedonian language, which Sofia regards as a dialect of Bulgarian.

In the "French proposal," put forward earlier in the summer when France held the rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union, some -- but not all -- of these issues are tackled. Most notably, before accession talks with Brussels can even begin, Skopje has to change its constitution, this time to include a reference to its Bulgarian minority.

References to the Friendship Treaty are also in the "French proposal," indicating that controversial historical and educational issues -- for example, how history is taught in schools or whether Macedonians are just an ethnic subgroup of Bulgarians -- will continue to dog the two neighbors' relations.

And while a number of EU officials, speaking on background to RFE/RL, think that the proposal put forward by France is "unfair" for Skopje, no one seems to have any better ideas. It's worth remembering that the pro-reformist government in Sofia collapsed in June because the "French proposal" was seen as too conciliatory, an indicator that Bulgaria, for domestic reasons, will always be a tough negotiating partner.

One EU diplomat, who wanted to remain anonymous because they weren't authorized to speak on the matter, said: "If Skopje doesn't agree on this, the country will be languishing in the same place for another decade. At least."

A new Bulgarian government could easily demand more and halt the process once again. And the very fact that the 27 EU member states were seriously considering decoupling Albania from North Macedonia in the accession process just emphasized the pressure Skopje was under from all sides to agree as quickly as possible.

In the end, this is what asymmetrical relations between EU members and those hoping to get in look like. The EU member states demand; the candidates comply. Bulgaria might be the sticklers now, but by looking at previous enlargements, the country is just following a time-honored tradition of being a squeaky wheel.

Italy drove a hard bargain before Slovenia joined the club in 2004. In turn, Slovenia delayed Croatia's entry by utilizing its status as an EU member to dictate the scope of talks with its larger neighbor. And what are the odds that Croatia will play a similar role if Bosnia-Herzegovina ever embarks on an EU accession path?

There is simply too much temptation for EU states to get whatever they can out of other countries' accession bids. Demands can be made before talks even start and, when they finally do, a candidate needs to start the slow process of adopting EU legislation, which is divided into over 30 policy chapters.

The 27 EU member states then have to decide unanimously when those chapters are opened and closed. And don't forget the interim benchmarks that also need to be green lit.

All together, that means there are close to 100 potential vetoes for each and every EU country. One hundred opportunities to stick a wrench in the works.

In the future, North Macedonia is unlikely to be the only candidate on the outside looking in.