Brussels – A green light for Albania, while North Macedonia remains stuck in the starting blocks. The ambassadors of the EU’s 27 Member States have decided to advance accession negotiations with Tirana, effectively breaking the long-standing “package approach” that had tied Albania’s progress to the political situation in North Macedonia. More than two years after the opening of talks on July 19, 2022, Tirana can now sit at the negotiating table in Brussels to begin discussions on the first chapters of its path towards EU membership. Meanwhile, North Macedonia is stuck on its failure to adopt the constitutional reforms required to meet the criteria for opening negotiations.
Albania moves forward
The issue of “Accession negotiations with Albania – Fulfilment of opening benchmarks for Cluster 1: Fundamentals” was on the agenda for the COREPER (Committee of Permanent Representatives of the EU) meeting on September 25. With the approval of a letter from the Hungarian presidency to the Albanian authorities, the 27 EU Member States have positively assessed Tirana’s alignment with the opening benchmarks for the first cluster of chapters, which focus on economic criteria, the functioning of democratic institutions, and public administration reform (five out of the total 33 chapters).
Several diplomatic sources in Brussels have confirmed that “the issue between Greece and Albania has been resolved,” marking the resolution of the main obstacle that had stalled negotiations for over a year. This refers to the diplomatic dispute that erupted in May 2023, when Fredis Beleri, the Greek ethnic mayor of the Albanian city of Himarë, was arrested by Albanian authorities on charges of vote-buying. The incident sparked a diplomatic standoff between the Greek government led by Kyriakos Mitsotakis and the Albanian government led by Edi Rama: Tirana accused Athens of trying to influence an independent investigation into a figure linked to the 1994 armed uprising by the Greek minority in Albania, while Athens claimed the charges were politically motivated. Beleri subsequently ran for, and was elected to, the European Parliament in the June 2024 elections under the New Democracy party, before being released in early September.
Resolving this diplomatic standoff with Greece was crucial for advancing Tirana’s EU accession process, as each EU Member State has veto power over every stage of the accession process, including the opening and closing of each of the six clusters of negotiating chapters. At this point, both Albania, which has been a candidate since 2014, and the EU will need to prepare their respective negotiating positions ahead of the intergovernmental conference. While no fixed date has been set, EU sources indicate that “the intention and mood” is to hold the conference “in October.”
North Macedonia awaits
The approval of Albania’s progress has an indirect impact on North Macedonia, an EU candidate since 2005, which has faced increasing challenges in its pursuit of EU membership. In 2018, the two Balkan countries were grouped together under what Brussels called a “package approach,” meaning that either both would advance together or neither would. However, this time, for the first time, only one country has made progress.
Although EU ambassadors have not formally decided to split the Tirana-Skopje dossier, advancing Albania with negotiations on Cluster 1 while leaving North Macedonia behind represents, in effect, a break from this approach. North Macedonia’s progress now hinges on its ability to implement the constitutional reforms required by Brussels just to begin discussions on the opening benchmarks—a goal that currently seems far off. EU institutions are carefully avoiding the term “split” in relation to the dossiers, but they have not clarified what will happen if Albania completes its negotiations significantly ahead of North Macedonia.
Since the return of the nationalist VMRO-DPMNE party to power, both in the government and the presidency, Skopje has reignited institutional tensions with its EU neighbours, Greece and Bulgaria, with whom it has previously had serious clashes and vetoes over its EU accession process. Nationalist tensions with Greece have resurfaced, particularly after Prime Minister Hristijan Mickoski and President Gordana Siljanovska-Davkova referred to their country simply as “Macedonia” rather than “North Macedonia” in their inaugural speeches. This decision, widely criticised by both Greece and EU institutions, is seen as a violation of the 2018 Prespa Agreement, which resolved the long-standing identity dispute and lifted Greece’s veto on Skopje’s EU accession.
Relations with Bulgaria have also deteriorated, two years after French President Emmanuel Macron’s efforts to resolve the Bulgarian veto, which had been blocking the start of accession talks since December 2020 over historical and linguistic issues. Under the EU’s negotiation framework, opening Cluster 1 requires not only a series of reforms in areas such as the judiciary, public procurement, and anti-corruption measures but also constitutional amendments, particularly regarding the treatment of minorities, including the Bulgarian minority.
Prime Minister Mickoski’s government has made it clear that it has no intention of discussing these reforms, a position that has already caused significant diplomatic friction. During a meeting on 13 September between Bulgarian President Rumen Radev and North Macedonia’s President Siljanovska-Davkova, the absence of North Macedonia’s yellow-sun flag alongside Bulgaria’s tricolour caused outrage in Skopje. After the flag incident, the next casualty of a renewed Bulgarian veto could very well be the EU negotiations themselves. Meanwhile, Albania continues to move steadily towards EU membership, with or without North Macedonia.
