North Macedonia, nationalists take all. Path to EU membership gets trickier

Brussels – It is a landslide victory, without appeal and on two fronts: Nationalists in North Macedonia triumphed in both the presidential and legislative elections to renew the Parliamentary Assembly. They are now poised to return to government after eight years of opposition. However, it is a result that could have heavy repercussions not only for the political polarization within the Balkan country but also for the already fragile relations with some neighbours in the region and for Skopje’s progress on the path to European Union membership.

The presidential runoff staged yesterday (May 8) saw a first in Macedonia’s (now Northern) little more than 30-year history: the candidate of the VMRO-DPMNE nationalists, Gordana Siljanovska-Davkova, won over the outgoing head of state and candidate of the now ex-ruling Social Democratic Union of Macedonia (SDSM), Stevo Pendarovski, with 65.14 per cent of the vote and will become the country’s first female president starting May 12. The post is mostly ceremonial, but for the new head of state, her election represents “a step forward for women’s rights; I will stand by them.” However, the landslide victory seems more related to voters signalling frustration over corruption cases in the country and North Macedonia’s continued stalemate on the path to European Union membership, even after starting inter-institutional negotiations in July 2022.

Proof of this are the results from the legislative elections held in parallel with the presidential runoff. When almost all the ballots have been counted, the coalition led by the nationalists of VMRO-DPMNE has won 43.23 per cent of the vote and will be able to count on 58 seats in the National Assembly, three short of the minimum threshold for a parliamentary majority. The Social Democrats collapsed, down to 15.36 per cent of the vote after eight years in government and surpassed in terms of parliamentary seats even by the coalition led by Albania’s main minority party, the Democratic Union for Integration (19 to 18). SDSM’s leader and ex-premier, Dimitar Kovačevski, not only called the result “a blow” to the party but also announced his intention to step down from the presidency once a replacement is found. At this point, the nationalists will have to engage in talks with the smaller parties that entered the Assembly in search of a coalition to support the new executive.

The VMRO-DPMNE leader, Hristijan Mickoski (Armend Nimani / Afp)

However, the most significant uncertainty for North Macedonia’s future concerns the attitude that the future ministers (and presumably the head of the executive) of VMRO-DPMNE will take toward Greece and Bulgaria as part of the EU accession path, given the fact that since the Republic’s birth, the reasons for tension with regional neighbours have all been caused by nationalist issues. North Macedonia has been a candidate country for EU membership since 2005, but its path was obstructed until 2018 by Greece due to identity contention over the Balkan country’s name change: only with the Prespa Agreement signed on June 12, 2018, the Republic of Macedonia has become Republic of North Macedonia and was able to accede to NATO (pending EU entry). But the leader of VMRO-DPMNE and a leading candidate to become the new premier, Hristijan Mickoski, has always refused to recognize the new name. There is no reaction from Greece at the moment, but it cannot be ruled out that old tensions between Athens and Skopje over the use of the name of Alexander the Great’s homeland may resurface.

The more serious issue for the timing of EU accession may instead involve another EU member country, Bulgaria. It was December 9, 2020, when Bulgaria halted the start of EU accession negotiations with Skopje in the General Affairs Council. Negotiations stalled for over a year and a half until the breakthrough in the summer of 2022. Thanks to the initiative of the French president, Emmanuel Macron, first the Bulgarian Parliament revoked the veto and then also the Macedonian Parliament approved the understanding: with the signing of the bilateral protocol between Sofia and Skopje, the situation was finally unblocked, and the first intergovernmental conferences for North Macedonia (and Albania, linked by the same dossier) could be reached on July 19, 2022, after almost three years. But opening the first Cluster of EU accession negotiations requires not only a whole series of reforms (from the judiciary to public procurement management, from the fight against corruption to public administration reform) but, above all, amendments to the Constitution regarding minorities in the country, primarily the Bulgarians.

This is precisely where the stage could fall with a nationalist government in Bulgaria. Mickoski has promised to maintain a hard line on language and historical issues, those purely identity-based on which everything in Brussels was stuck from December 2020 to July 2022: “We will not vote on constitutional changes under Bulgarian dictation neither now nor in the future,” is the VMRO-DPMNE leader’s threat. Over the past year and a half, the Social Democratic-led government has tried to amend the Constitution to recognize the Bulgarian minority, but it never found the numbers needed to pass the motion in the National Assembly (for which at least two-thirds of deputies are required). A sufficient majority will not emerge even after this round of elections, and the only hope for Macedonians is that VMRO-DPMNE’s bitter nationalist rhetoric will fade in the coming months, favouring behind-the-scenes compromise deals as happened in 2018 to get the Prespa Agreement constitutionally approved. Also hovering over this scenario is an ominous unknown, namely that of the electoral campaign in Bulgaria, which on June 9 will go to early elections for the sixth time in three years. The risk is that yesterday’s result at the polls in North Macedonia will exacerbate nationalist rhetoric in Sofia as well, again making the relationship between the two countries an issue of political confrontation capable of holding back Skopje’s path toward the European Union.