Macedonia’s Long Transition: From Independence to the Prespa Agreement and Beyond 3031207726, 9783031207723

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Macedonia’s Long Transition From Independence to the Prespa Agreement and Beyond Edited by Robert Hudson · Ivan Dodovski

Macedonia’s Long Transition

Robert Hudson · Ivan Dodovski Editors

Macedonia’s Long Transition From Independence to the Prespa Agreement and Beyond

Editors Robert Hudson University of Derby Derby, UK

Ivan Dodovski University American College Skopje Skopje, North Macedonia

University American College Skopje Skopje, North Macedonia

ISBN 978-3-031-20772-3 ISBN 978-3-031-20773-0 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-20773-0 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover credit: © Ivan Dodovski This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

To RJ and Emilie-Anne from your father —Robert Hudson To Aleksandra and our sons Jakov and Elisej —Ivan Dodovski

Acknowledgements

The editors would like to thank Toni Vasikj for designing the excellent map of North Macedonia. We also would like to thank Demjan Anatoli Golubov for his hard work in helping produce the index. Our thanks go to ENTAN—the European Non-Territorial Autonomy Network— supported by COST (www.cost.eu), for funding a short-term scientific mission in Skopje in the latter days of our project and also to our editors Ambra Finotello and Rebecca Roberts at Palgrave Macmillan for their support and guidance, and to Redhu Ruthroyani and Nandakini Lahri in the final stages of producing this book.

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A Chronology of Key Events During Macedonia’s Long Transition

1990 11 November 25 November

First ballot of the multi-party elections for the Macedonian Assembly took place. Second ballot held with VMRO-DPMNE winning the majority of seats – 38, the League of Communists of Macedonia – 31.

1991 25 January

27 January 8 September

17 September

The Macedonian Parliament (Sobranie) adopted the declaration of Macedonian independence. The Sobranie elected Kiro Gligorov as the President of the Socialist Republic of Macedonia. Macedonia organised an independence referendum. The turnout was 75.74 per cent of the Macedonian population, of whom 95.26 per cent voted in favour of independence. The Sobranie proclaimed a new constitution by which Macedonia was defined as a sovereign and independent democratic state.

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1992 15 January

26 March 26 April

27 June

11 December

The Badinteur Commission (Arbitrary Commission of the EC) report confirmed that all requirements for the international recognition of Macedonia (and Slovenia) had been met. However, the European Commission ignored this opinion because of the Greek veto. The Yugoslav People’s Army (JNA) formally left the territory of Macedonia. The Yugoslav dinar was replaced by the Macedonian denar as the official currency of the country, initially as a means of avoiding the effects of hyperinflation on the Yugoslav dinar. The Macedonian denar would be devalued several times until May 1993. The Lisbon Declaration of the EC recognised the country only under a name that would not contain the word Macedonia. UN approval for the deployment of the United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR) to Macedonia made up of 700 soldiers. UN Security Council resolution 795.

1993 7 April

14 June

18 June

Macedonia admitted to the UN, under the provisional name of Former Republic of Macedonia (FYROM). UN SC resolution 817. The Sobranie votes in a new Law on the Transformation of Enterprises with Social Capital, ushering in the second stage of privatisation. UN Security Council (resolution 842) approves of the deployment of an additional contingent of 300 soldiers as a protection force in Macedonia (UNPROFOR) to prevent any spill over from the conflicts to the north of the

A CHRONOLOGY OF KEY EVENTS DURING MACEDONIA’S …

3 December 7 December

23 December

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country. In 1995, this would rise to 1,100 troops mainly from the Scandinavian countries and the United States under the rebranded mission’s name of UNPREDEP. US Liaison Office established in Skopje. Blazhe Koneski died. He was a key figure of Macedonian literature and culture after the Second World War, and the main contributor to the codification of the standard Macedonian language. The Sobranie voted to apply for the NATO PfP (Partnership for Peace) programme.

1994 9 February 16 February 14 November

The United States recognised Macedonia. Greece unilaterally blockaded its border with Macedonia. The announcement of the results of the first census after independence.

1995 17 February

13 September

Clashes between ethnic Albanians and police near Tetovo over the governmental decision to prevent the opening of an Albanian university in Tetovo. One person was shot dead. Greek and Macedonian foreign ministers signed an Interim Accord on the normalisation of relations between Greece and Macedonia at the United Nations in New York. This would result in Greece lifting its economic blockade on Macedonia and Macedonia removing the 16 sun rays of the Star of Vergina from its state symbols, with negotiations over the name of Macedonia to take place in due course. Meanwhile, full diplomatic relations were established between the United States and Macedonia.

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27 September October 3 October 12 October

15 October 11 November

15 November

Macedonia admitted to the Council of Europe under the provisional name of FYROM. The Macedonian economy was stabilised and repegged to the German mark. Unsuccessful assassination attempt against President Gligorov in Skopje. Macedonia admitted to the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) as FYROM. Greek blockade lifted. NATO unanimously agreed to the accession of FYROM to the ‘Partnership for Peace’ (PfP) programme. Branko Crvenkovski the Macedonian Prime Minister signed the PfP programme with NATO.

1996 8 April

Yugoslavia recognises Macedonia’s independence, its constitutional name (Republic of Macedonia) and the Macedonian language.

1997 6 March

The scandal involving the approximately 120 million Deutsche mark pyramid scheme of the TAT savings bank in Bitola began to unfold affecting around 13,000 depositors, of whom over 100 committed suicide for over a decade. This was the greatest pyramid fraud in the history of the country, affecting the stability of the banking system and for the longer term, trust in the state institutions.

1998 8–14 March

Macedonian Albanians demonstrate in support of the independence of Kosovo from the FRY.

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September–October 30 November

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NATO accelerates the build-up of troops in Macedonia. After election victory, VMRO-DPMNE forms a coalition government led by Ljubcho Georgievski.

1999 27 January 14 February

24 March–11 June 5 April

20–25 April 9 June

14 November

Macedonia recognises Taiwan. China breaks diplomatic relations with Macedonia over Skopje’s recognition of Taiwan and subsequently puts veto in the UN Security Council over the extension of the UN peacekeeping mission. NATO bombings of Kosovo and FRY. Massive influx of some 360,000 Kosovar Albanians from Kosovo into Macedonia at the Blace border crossing. This was the equivalent of 17 per cent of Macedonia’s population. They were held in Macedonian refugee camps. Washington Summit and the signing of the Membership Action Plan with NATO. Following the signing of the Kumanovo Agreement between KFOR and governments of the FRY and of the Republic of Serbia, Macedonia agrees to the transiting of KFOR troops across Macedonian territory, although KFOR troops had been present for some time. Boris Trajkovski wins the second round of elections and the following day succeeds Kiro Gligorov as President of the Republic of Macedonia.

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2000 24 January

30 January

5 April

24 November

The European Commission Directives proposed to the EU Council were adopted, concerning the elevation of the cooperation level between Macedonia and the EU as well as commencing the official negotiations for prospective EU membership. In a communique, the NLA assumes the responsibility for the killing of three police officers in the village of Arachinovo near Skopje, on 11 January, and for the attack on the police station Oslomej in Kichevo, on 19 January, which marks the beginning of the armed offensive of the NLA. Pursuant to the Lisbon Decision of the European Commission, the first round of negotiations between the Republic of Macedonia and the EU officially commenced relating to the SAA (Stabilisation and Accession Agreement). Negotiations on the SAA were realised between April and November 2000. The SAA is initialled on the margins of the Zagreb Summit. It is later signed in Luxembourg on 9 April 2001.

2001 16 February

15 March 23 March

Following the kidnapping and release of the A1 TV crew at Tanushevci (the Tanushevci Incident), the first clashes were witnessed between Macedonian government forces and ethnic Albanian rebels in the NLA. NLA rebels within 12 km of Skopje. Macedonian authorities decide to launch an offensive against the NLA near Tetovo which lasts until 30 March. By many accounts, this

A CHRONOLOGY OF KEY EVENTS DURING MACEDONIA’S …

9 April

4 May 9 June

24 June 22–24 July 28 July 13 August

15 November

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offensive was successful, at least in military terms. Macedonia admitted as an ‘associate member’ of the EU, after signing up to the Stabilisation and Association Process (SAP) in Luxembourg. Some 4,000 guerrilla fighters from Kosovo invade and take over villages near Kumanovo. The rebels take control of Arachinovo, 8 km from Skopje and near Skopje Airport. This is known as the Arachinovo offensive. A ceasefire enables the NLA rebels to leave Arachinovo. Fierce fighting around Tetovo. Peace talks in Ohrid. Peace deal signed between the two sides, known as the Ohrid Framework Agreement (OFA), which introduces features of consociational power sharing. In the meantime, some scattered clashes continue. The Sobranie approves the Ohrid reforms, such as building a new multi-ethnic police force and using Albanian as the second official language in areas dominated by an ethnic Albanian population.

2002 1 November

Following the heavy defeat of the VMRODPMNE government in the general elections held on 15 September, the SDSM forms a new government under the leadership of Prime Minister Branko Crvenkovski.

2003 2 May

The Adriatic Charter is signed by Macedonia, Albania and Croatia under the aegis of the US,

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intended to promote the prospective NATO membership of the three countries. 2004 26 February 28 April

31 May

7 November

President Boris Trajkovski is killed in an aeroplane crash in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Branko Crvenkovski (SDSM) was elected as President of Macedonia; he assumed his office on 12 May. The Sobranie appointed Hari Kostov as Prime Minister of Macedonia; he resigned on 15 November following rows within his coalition government and was succeeded by Vlado Buchkovski, who was elected on 17 December. Referendum to overrule the new law on territorial organisation which introduced new municipal borders to give greater control to ethnic Albanians in local districts. The referendum failed due to low turnout following the call to boycott by the Macedonian Prime Minister, as well as by the US and EU.

2005 17 December

At the Brussels Summit, the European Council granted candidate status to Macedonia.

2006 5 June 28 August 27 December

VMRO-DPMNE wins the parliamentary elections. A new government is formed under the leadership of Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski. Petrovec Airport renamed after Alexander the Great, the first in a series of ‘antiquisation’ measures introduced by Gruevski’s government.

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xvii

2008 2–4 April

US presses for Macedonia’s entry into NATO but Greece blocks Macedonia’s integration into the alliance at the Bucharest Summit due to the name dispute. By contrast, Croatia and Albania are invited to join.

2009 5 April

19 December

Gjorge Ivanov (VMRO-DPMNE) elected as President of Macedonia. He assumed office on 12 May. Visa liberalisation whereby Macedonian citizens of the Republic of Macedonia are allowed visa free travel within the EU’s Schengen zone.

2010 4 February

‘Skopje 2014’ project plans presented in pubic.

2011 5 June

6 June

5 December

VMRO-DPMNE wins again in the general elections, Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski stays in power. Protest in several cities against police brutality after a 22-year-old is killed by a member of the special forces Tigers. The International Court of Justice in the Hague found Greece guilty of violating the Interim Accord with Macedonia by blocking the country’s NATO membership in 2008.

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2012 24 December

12 April

‘ Black Monday’ incident in which opposition MPs refusing to vote the budget were forcibly ejected from the parliament, along with journalists. Smilkovci Lake massacre in which five civilians were killed at a man-made lake outside Skopje.

2014 27 April

Early national elections coincide with the second round of the presidential elections: Gjorge Ivanov wins a second presidential term, and VMRO-DPMNE’s leader Nikola Gruevski remains as prime minister. SDSM will not recognise the results and subsequently boycott the parliament claiming election fraud.

2015 Throughout 2015

8 February

There is a huge influx of migrants on what becomes known as the Balkan Route. Mostly Syrian refugees, increasing migration by 16 times compared with the 2014 figures. By November, over 11,000 refugees and migrants have been registered at the transit centre in Gevgelija. The leader of the opposition Zoran Zaev starts a series of public releases of information ‘bombs’, that is, illegal audio recordings of conversations of Prime Minister Gruevski and other high officials, accusing him and the secret police of wiretapping 20,000 citizens including politicians, journalists and religious leaders. Various protests will ensue in response to the scandal calling for interim government and early elections.

A CHRONOLOGY OF KEY EVENTS DURING MACEDONIA’S …

9 May

2 June–15 July

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Shoot out in the Divo Naselje neighbourhood in Kumanovo between members of the NLA and Macedonian police, demonstrating that signs of lingering tensions still exist in the country. 8 policemen were killed whilst 37 officers were wounded in the incident. Also, 10 of the militants were killed, whilst 28 were arrested and charged for terrorism. Mediation of the Przhino Agreement with the EU, in a bid to end the political and institutional crisis that had arisen in the first half of 2015, with the establishment of a special prosecutor (Katica Janeva) to lead investigations into the wiretapping scandal.

2016 14 January

12 April

8–9 July

VMRO-DPMNE Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski resigns. It is announced that elections will take place on 5 June, but these are delayed until December. President Ivanov grants a blanket amnesty to officials suspected of involvement in the wiretapping affair. This sparks demonstrations which in eight days turn into ‘The Colourful Revolution’ with colours being thrown at government buildings and monuments of the Skopje 2014 project as a symbolic sign of protest. As anti-government rallies grow stronger and spread in several cities, Ivanov decides to withdraw the abolition by signing two annulment acts on 27 May and 6 June, respectively. NATO ignores Macedonian entry at the Warsaw Summit, inviting only Montenegro from the Western Balkans to join the alliance.

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September

11 December

The so-called Balkan Route for migrants and refugees is sealed off with participation from 11 countries. Elections held, but it would take four months before President Ivanov would call on Zoran Zaev, leader of the SDSM, to form a new coalition government.

2017 29 January

23 February 27 April

31 May 1 August

10 December

VMRO-DPMNE fails to form a coalition government with its former Albanian partner DUI. Zoran Zaev, leader of the SDSM, forms a new coalition with DUI. The storming of the Macedonian Sobranie, also known as ‘Bloody Thursday’ (Krvavˇcetvrtok), when about 200 Macedonian nationalists stormed the parliament in reaction to the election of Talat Xhaferi, an ethnic Albanian, as speaker of the parliament. Several politicians injured in the scuffles and over twenty arrests. Zaev’s government comes to power, declaring Euro-Atlantic integration as its strategic goal. Macedonian Prime Minister Zaev and Bulgarian Prime Minister Borisov sign a friendship treaty between the two countries. Nikola Gruevski resigns as leader of VMRODPMNE.

2018 17 June

30 September

Prespa Agreement signed between the Macedonian Foreign Minister Nikola Dimitrov and the Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Kotsias. Consultative referendum on membership of the EU and NATO, and acceptance of the name

A CHRONOLOGY OF KEY EVENTS DURING MACEDONIA’S …

19 October

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agreement between the Republic of Greece and the Republic of North Macedonia, as set out in the Prespa Agreement. With 94 per cent in favour, but only 37 per cent voter turnout, when a 50 per cent threshold was required, the referendum failed, and so the agreement had to be ratified by two-thirds (80 MPs) of the Sobranie. 80 out of 120 MPs voted to start the process of renaming of the country.

2019 11 January

25 January 6 February 12 May 15 September

18 October

Constitutional changes for renaming of the country to the Republic of North Macedonia are passed by a two-thirds majority (81 MPs) in the Sobranie thus completing the legal adoption of the Prespa Agreement. Ratification of the Prespa Agreement in the Greek Parliament. North Macedonia’s accession protocol with NATO, signed by all 29 NATO member states. Stevo Pendarovski is elected as President of the Republic of North Macedonia. The Sobranie ends the mandate of the institution of the Special Procurator after she resigns, thereby ending the Przhino Process. She had been detained on 21 August on charges of abuse of authority and involvement in an extortion scandal. The EU Council takes the decision not to give a date for the start of accession negotiations for the Republic of North Macedonia to enter the EU, thereby causing yet further delays in the EU integration process. This was due to a French veto on the grounds that a new accession negotiations methodology should be put in place first.

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2020 24 March

27 March 15 July

18 August

30 August

17 November

After so many delays, ministers for European affairs give their political agreement to the opening of EU accession talks with North Macedonia. North Macedonia becomes a member state of NATO. Initially set for 12 April but postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic, early parliamentary elections are held on 15 July resulting in a divided parliament: an SDSM-led coalition wins 46 seats, followed by 44-seat coalition of parties led by VMRO-DPMNE. Having won 15 seats, DUI declares its participation in any government coalition dependant on the nomination of an ethnic Albanian as prime minister. Striking a deal with DUI, Zoran Zaev concedes to be nominated for prime minister and hand this position over to an ethnic Albanian nominee no later than 100 days prior to the next parliamentary elections. The Sobranie approves a coalition of an SDSMled alliance of parties with two Albanian parties—DUI and DPA (Democratic Party of Albanians)—comprising a slim majority of 62 MPs in a 120-seat parliament. Bulgaria puts a veto on the Negotiation Framework for North Macedonia’s accession talks with the EU.

2021 5–30 September

National census is held, the first in two decades; preliminary results suggest a significant decline in population; final results are expected in the spring of 2022.

A CHRONOLOGY OF KEY EVENTS DURING MACEDONIA’S …

31 October

14 December

29 December

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Following the SDSM-led coalition’s major defeat at the local elections, Zoran Zaev announces that he is to resign from his position as prime minister and party leader. EU Foreign and European affairs ministers fail to set a date for the start of the accession talks for North Macedonia due to the continuing blockade by Bulgaria. President Stevo Pendarovski hands over the mandate for the composition of a new government to Dimitar Kovachevski, who had been elected on 12 December as SDSM’s new party leader.

2022 30 March

24 May

16 July

The State Statistical Office announces the results of the national census: the country’s resident population totals 1,836,713 with 58.44% declaring themselves as Macedonians, 24.30% as Albanians, 3.86% as Turks, 2.53% as Roma, 1.30% as Serbs, 0.87% as Bosniaks and 0.47% as Vlachs. At a joint liturgy in Skopje, the Serbian Patriarch Porfirije announced that the Serbian Orthodox Church had recognised the autocephaly of the Macedonian Orthodox Church—Archdiocese of Ohrid. 68 out of 120 MPs voted in favour of the so-called French proposal that is meant to overcome the Bulgarian veto on the start of North Macedonia’s accession negotiations with the EU. Prior to the vote, protestors supported by the opposition had been rallying in Skopje for 10 days, asking the government to reject the deal.

Map of the Republic of North Macedonia

Contents

1

1

Introduction Robert Hudson and Ivan Dodovski

2

Macedonia’s Long Transition: An Overview of the Key Issues Robert Hudson

17

Macedonia’s Revolving Security Threats: Perpetual Instability on the Edge of Europe Stevo Pendarovski

45

3

4

The Impossible Reconciliation of Historical Narratives: The Macedonian Name Dispute and Prospects for the Future Zhidas Daskalovski

5

The Economic Transition of Macedonia Marjan Petreski

6

Privatisation in Macedonia and Communities in Transition Hyrije Abazi-Alili

7

Political Parties and the Trials of Democracy Nenad Markovikj

61 77

95 111

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CONTENTS

145

8

Macedonia’s Euro-Atlantic Integration Blerim Reka

9

Migration Movements and Their Implications for Macedonia Marina Andeva

163

The Identity Shift: Claims on Antiquity in Macedonian Fiction and Drama Ivan Dodovski

179

10

11

The Dissonant Narratives of the Skopje 2014 Project Loreta Georgievska-Jakovleva

12

An Analysis of Bulgaria’s Rejection of the Macedonian Ethno-Linguistic Identity and Its Implications Ognen Vangelov

13

And Beyond: An Afterword Robert Hudson and Ivan Dodovski

Index

195

207 223

233

Notes on Contributors

Hyrije Abazi-Alili is Associate Professor in Economics and Dean of the Faculty of Business and Economics at the South East European University in Tetovo, North Macedonia. She teaches undergraduate, postgraduate and doctoral courses in economics, analytics and econometrics, and research methodology. She holds a Ph.D. in economics from Staffordshire University, UK. She was Affiliate Fellow at CERGE-EI, Prague, in 2014–2020. Her research interests include economics of innovation, ICT, entrepreneurship, ownership issues, labour market, gender and social issues, and advanced application of econometrical models. She published research articles and serves as editor and reviewer of several international journals. She has been involved in Erasmus + projects as well as a senior expert in several international EU-funded and UNDP-funded projects. Marina Andeva is Associate Professor at the University American College Skopje. She currently teaches on the ‘Migrations and Refugees’ module at postgraduate level and on the ‘Introduction to Law’ and ‘Regional autonomy and local self-government’ modules at undergraduate level. Her other working engagements include the position of Research Fellow at the Institute for International Sociology (ISIG) since 2009. She finished her Ph.D. on Transborder policies and an M.A. in European Policy Making at the University of Trieste in Italy. Her B.A. was in Law at the Faculty of Law ‘Justinius Primus’, Sts. Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje. She is actively involved in the field of migration, minority protection, and cross-border cooperation. xxvii

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NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Zhidas Daskalovski holds a Ph.D. from the Political Science Department, Central European University. He has published numerous scholarly articles on politics in the South East European region, as well as coediting books, including Understanding the War in Kosovo, Frank Cass, London, 2003, and Ten Years After the Ohrid Framework: Lessons (to be) Learned from the Macedonian Experience, CRPM, and Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, Skopje, 2012. A professor at the University of St. Kliment Ohridski in Bitola and one of the most prominent political scientists in Macedonia, he is Director of the Council of Europe supported School of Public Policy ‘Mother Teresa’. He is the recipient of a number of distinguished research fellowships, including the Lord Dahrendorf Fellowship at St. Anthony’s College at the University of Oxford, the Macedonian Studies Fellowship from the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London, and the Social Science Research Council/Ethnobarometer Fellowship at the University of North Carolina. He has written Macedonia country reports for Freedom House/Nations in Transit, Open Budget Index, Global Integrity Report, Bertelsmann Transformation Index, UNDP People Centred Analysis and the UN Human Development Report. His expertise is prominent in the fields of policy analysis in general and decentralisation, democratisation, ethnic and multicultural issues in particular. Ivan Dodovski is Professor in Critical Theory and Literature. Currently, he is Dean of the School of Political Science at University American College Skopje. He studied general and comparative literature with American studies and obtained an M.A. degree in Macedonian literature and narratology at Sts. Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Nottingham, UK. His recent research is focused on politics and identity representation in contemporary Balkan drama. He has edited the volume Multiculturalism in Macedonia: An Emerging Model (2005) and nine recent volumes dealing with European integration, politics, economy and culture. He has also published academic papers, three poetry books and a collection of short stories. His is Chair of ENTAN—the European Non-Territorial Autonomy Network. Loreta Georgievska-Jakovleva, Ph.D. currently works as a professor and researcher at the Institute for Macedonian Literature of Sts. Cyril and Methodius University (UKIM) in Skopje. Her research areas include: cultural studies, cultural policy, theory of literature and gender studies. She is currently the Head of Doctoral Study Programmes in Cultural

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

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Studies and Macedonian Literature at UKIM. She is Visiting Professor at the State University of Tetovo and at the Goce Delcev University in Stip. Her publications include: An Open Circle: The Poetics of the Novels of Tashko Georgievski (1997), A Mirror of the Discourse (2000), The Fantastic and the Macedonian Novel (2001), Allegory, Grotesque and the Macedonian Novel (2002), The Literature and the Transition (2008), Identiti(es) (2012) and Culture and Media (2016). She is a member of the Association of Comparative Literature of Macedonia, Association of Writers of Macedonia, the Centre for Culture and Cultural Studies, and the Balkan Network for Culture and Cultural Studies. Her social and professional functions include: Director of the Institute of Macedonian literature (2005–2011), Member of the Rector Board of the Sts. Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje (2004–2009), Member of the Council of the International Seminar of Macedonian language, literature and culture (2004–2011), President of the Council of the Institute of Macedonian Literature (2002–2004), Editor in Chief of the Journal Spectrum, Editor in Chief of the International Journal Culture and President of the Center for Culture and Cultural Studies. Robert Hudson is Emeritus Professor in European History and Cultural Politics at the University of Derby, Visiting Professor at University American College Skopje, North Macedonia, and the former Director of the Identity, Conflict, and Representation Research Centre. A graduate of the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University of London, he held a Yugoslav government scholarship as a Postgraduate Fellow at the University of Sarajevo. He was a faculty member of the EU MarieCurie-funded European Doctoral Enhancement Programme (EDEN) in Peace and Conflict Studies (1997–2010). He has revisited the former Yugoslavia and its successor states frequently since 1995 and during the 1990s participated on six missions in the Western Balkans with the OSCE (Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe) as an election supervisor. Amongst other publications, he co-edited Politics of Identity: Migrants and Minorities in Multicultural States (Palgrave, 2000), Different Approaches to Peace and Conflict Research (Deusto UP, 2008), Peace, Conflict and Identity: Multidisciplinary Approaches to Research (Deusto UP, 2009), After Yugoslavia (Palgrave 2012), Land and Identity (Rodopi, 2013), Affective Landscapes (Ashgate 2014) and Europe and the Balkans (UACS, 2018).

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NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Nenad Markovikj is Professor in the Political Science Department of the Law Faculty ‘Justinius Primus’ at Sts. Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje. He obtained his M.A. through the European Regional Masters Programme in Democracy and Human Rights in South East Europe (ERMA) at the Universities of Sarajevo and Bologna in 2003. He defended his Ph.D. thesis at Sts. Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje in 2010. His thesis was entitled ‘The Impact of Civil Society Organisations on the Democratic Transition and Consolidation in the Republic of Macedonia’. He is the founder and senior researcher in the Institute for Democracy ‘Societas Civilis’ in Skopje and a member of the editorial board of the quarterly magazine Political Thought. He is President of the Macedonian Political Science Association (MPSA) as well as the founder and director of the foundation ‘Alliance of Civilisations’—Macedonia. His main interests are in political theory, political philosophy, nationalism, civil society, political culture and myth. Stevo Pendarovski is Professor in International Security and Foreign Affairs at the School of Political Sciences at University American College Skopje. In the 1990s, he was an Assistant-Minister for Public Relations and Head of the Analytical and Research Department in the Macedonian Ministry of Interior Affairs. He has served as National Security and Chief Foreign Policy Advisor to two Presidents of the Republic of Macedonia. In 2004/5, he was a Head of the State Election Commission. His teaching and research areas include geopolitics, globalisation, national security, US foreign policy, EU foreign and security policy, and small states in international affairs. Since 2019, he has been serving as the fifth President of the Republic of North Macedonia. Marjan Petreski is Professor at the School of Business Economics and Management and Research Vice-Rector of University American College Skopje. He holds a Ph.D. from Staffordshire University, UK. His research focus is on exchange-rate regimes, monetary policy and strategy, as well as an array of development and labour market topics, all with a focus on transition economies. He has published widely, with more than twenty articles in international peer reviewed journals, as well as being the author of four books and five chapters in books published internationally. He was awarded the Young Scientist Award in 2009 for his research by the Macedonian Academy of Sciences and Arts. In 2013, he won the Olga Radzyer Award in 2010 by the Östereichische Nationalbank and the Japanese Award for Outstanding Research on Development by the Global

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Development Network and the Government of Japan. He served as a Career Integration Fellow of CERGE-EI in Prague, as well as being an external consultant of the World Bank, the International Labor Organization, the United Nations Conference for Trade and Development, and the UN Women and other consultancies. Blerim Reka is Professor of International Public Law, EU Law and International Relations at UBT in Prishtina. He was Pro-Rector for International Relations, Pro-Rector for research, Dean of the Faculty of Law and Dean of the Faculty of Political Science and Public Administration at the South East European University (SEEU) in Tetovo-Skopje. He was Minister for EU Integration of the Republic of Kosovo, a presidential candidate in the Republic of North Macedonia and Ambassador of the Republic of Macedonia to the EU, Brussels. He obtained his Ph.D. in International Law from the University of Prishtina and the University of Graz. He holds an M.A. degree in Civil & Economic Law and a B.A. degree in Law. His was Fellow at the Harvard University Kennedy School of Governance and Fulbright Senior Research Fellow at University of Southern California in Los Angeles. He was visiting lector at: USC, USFSP, Bologna University, Graz University, Ghent University and Calabria University. He has overseen a wide range of research projects as a senior research with: Colombia University, Indiana University and Graz University; alongside mentoring Ph.D. candidates at: Sorbonne University Paris, Catholic University in Belgium, University of Tirana, University of Prishtina and SEEU. He gave legal consultancy expertise for international organisations and also did constitutional drafting in Macedonia and Kosovo. He was a member of the expert team of the Government of the Republic of Macedonia for the National Strategy for Integration into the EU (2004). He is expert for the Western Balkans at the Geopolitical Information Services (GIS), Vaduz, Lichtenstein. He has authored 20 books, including the most recent one: Balkans Geopolitics: Between Cold War and Hot Peace (Jalifat Publishing, Houston & GIS, Vaduz, 2020). Ognen Vangelov graduated at the Faculty of Philology at the Sts. Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje, gained an M.A. at Denver University as a Ron Brown Fellow of the US government and was awarded his Ph.D. at the Queen’s University in Canada as a Fellow of the Canadian Government under the Ontario Trillium Scholarship and the Canada Vanier Graduate Fellowship. He is currently Assistant Professor in Political Science and International Relations at University

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American College Skopje. He is a member of the Macedonian–Bulgarian Joint Multidisciplinary Expert Commission on Historical and Educational Issues.

Abbreviations and Acronyms

AA ASNOM BCP BESA DPA DUI EBO EC EU EUSR FDI FRODEM FRY FYROM GDP ICJ IMRO IOM ISAF ISIS JNA KFOR KLA

Alliance for the Albanians Anti-fascist Assembly of the People’s Liberation of Macedonia Bulgarian Communist Party An Albanian political party, derived from the Albanian concept of honour. Literally, a pledge of honour. Democratic Party of Albanians Democratic Union for Integration Employee buy-out European Commission European Union European Union Special Representative Foreign Direct Investment Front for Democratic Macedonia Federal Republic of Yugoslavia Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia Gross Domestic Product International Court of Justice (UN) Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organisation International Organisation for Migration International Security Assistance Force Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (also known as Daesh). Also, ISIL (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) Yugoslav People’s Army Kosovo Force Kosovo Liberation Army (also known as UÇK) xxxiii

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ABBREVIATIONS AND ACRONYMS

LATP LDP Levica MAP MBO NATO NDP NGO NLA NSDP OFA OSCE PDP PfP SAA SAP SDSM SFRY SOE SP UNHCR UNPREDEP UNPROFOR UN SC US VMRO-DPMNE VMRO-NP

Law on Asylum and Temporary Protection Liberal Democratic Party The Left, a political party Membership Action Plan (NATO) Management buy-out North Atlantic Treaty Organisation National Democratic Party Non-Governmental Organisation National Liberation Army New Social-democratic Party Ohrid Framework Agreement Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe Party for Democratic Prosperity Partnership for Peace (NATO) Stabilisation and Association Agreement (EU) Stabilisation and Association Process (EU) Social Democratic Union of Macedonia Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia Socially Owned Enterprise Socialist Party United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees United Nations Preventative Deployment Force United Nations Protection Force United Nations Security Council United States Internal Macedonian Revolutionary OrganisationDemocratic Party for Macedonian National Unity Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organisation-People’s Party

List of Charts

Chart 5.1

Chart 5.2 Chart 5.3 Chart 5.4

Chart 5.5 Chart 5.6

Chart 5.7 Chart 5.8 Chart 5.9 Chart 5.10 Chart 5.11

GDP growth rates of the Yugoslav republics after Yugoslavia’s dissolution (Source Penn World Tables) Unemployment rates (Source International Labour Organisation) Macedonian inflation (Source World Development Indicators) Exchange rate of the Macedonian denar to the German mark (Source National Bank of the Republic of Macedonia) Macedonian economic growth (Source World Development Indicators) Some indices on the political stability and corruption (Note Indices range between -2.5 [weak] and +2.5 [strong]. Source World Bank Governance Indicators) Export and import of Macedonia (Source World Development Indicators) FDIs and remittances in Macedonia (Source World Development Indicators) Annual growth rates of construction (Source State Statistical Office of Macedonia) Unemployment rate (Source State Statistical Office of Macedonia) Public debt (Source Ministry of Finance of Macedonia)

78 79 80

81 82

84 84 85 90 91 92

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List of Tables

Table 5.1 Table 5.2 Table 5.3 Table 6.1 Table 6.2 Table 7.1 Table 7.2 Table 7.3 Table 7.4 Table 7.5 Table 7.6

Trade shares of Macedonia with the EU and the Western Balkans FDI shares of Macedonia with the EU Trade volume with Greece (% of total trade) Average shareholding of largest seven shareholders owning more than 5% of shares Average labour productivity by ownership concentration category in years (in million denars per employee) Index of party democracy in Macedonia—General level of democracy within the party Index of party democracy—Relations between the central party organs and the local branches Short history of political crises in the Republic of Macedonia 1994–2014 Boycotts of the Macedonian Parliament 1994–2015 Scores of the Republic of Macedonia in four categories according to Freedom House Ranking of Macedonia on the World Press Freedom Index, 2003–2016

86 87 92 103 106 132 133 136 138 139 139

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction Robert Hudson and Ivan Dodovski

The seed of the idea of compiling an edited collection on Macedonia’s long transition was first sown in the New Year of 2015 in response to a paper delivered by Stevo Pendarovski at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Macedonia in Skopje on 4 December 2014. Pendarovski’s ideas were subsequently published in a chapter entitled ‘Electoral Authoritarianism at the End of the Transition in the Western Balkans’ (2015). This led to the editors of Macedonia’s Long Transition reflecting on the thirty-year-long duration of Macedonia’s transition by comparison with the much shorter transitions of other post-socialist states in Eastern and Central Europe. In the thirtieth year of Macedonian independence, it would seem that at long last there might be light at the end of the tunnel and that the country, recently renamed as North Macedonia, will eventually

R. Hudson (B) University of Derby, Derby, UK e-mail: [email protected] R. Hudson · I. Dodovski University American College Skopje, Skopje, North Macedonia e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 R. Hudson and I. Dodovski (eds.), Macedonia’s Long Transition, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-20773-0_12

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emerge from its long period of transition. Central to this belief is the potential role that could be played by the Euro-Atlantic project which has already involved Macedonia’s full membership of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. From the perspective of security, it would seem most appropriate that the final words of this book project were written at a time when armed conflict had broken out once again in Europe with President Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and at a time when we are confronted with tensions arising from the changing geopolitical situation in Europe and beyond with the growing influence of non-Euro-Atlantic powers. Stability in the Western Balkans, in general, and in North Macedonia, in particular, is crucial in the face of current security issues confronting Eastern and Central Europe. With the exception of one writer—himself with forty years’ academic and personal engagement with the Balkan region—all the contributors hail from the Republic of North Macedonia. The work has drawn together contributions from leading Macedonian scholars representing the different ethnic communities and political persuasions of the country. Macedonia’s Long Transition is interdisciplinary in its approach, with contributions from political scientists, historians, lawyers, economists, political leaders, political commentators and literary academics. We also wanted to provide an updated representation of developments in Macedonia during its long transition by focusing on events over the last decade and building on the excellent scholarship of previous publications by authors such as James Pettifer (2001), John Phillips (2002), Hugh Poulton (1995, 2000) and Andrew Rossos (2008) inter alia. So much has happened in Macedonia since the original germination of this project. The country has suffered from political corruption, and it went without government for a period of more than five months (December 2016 to May 2017) following the wiretapping scandal, which led to the ‘colourful revolution’, and then disputes over the Transatlantic project and the impact of migration along the Balkan Route and the coming to power of the coalition government of Zoran Zaev, in 2017. This was followed a year later by the signing of the Prespa Agreement between Macedonia and Greece and the ending of the name dispute in 2019. Meanwhile, in May 2019, our colleague and fellow contributor Professor Pendarovski was elected President of the Republic of North Macedonia, and then, on 27 March 2020, the country became the thirtieth member state of NATO.

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At the time, from looking at the country through an optimistic prism and following its renaming, it seemed as though the road to NATO and EU membership might eventually bear fruition and that Macedonia’s long transition might gradually be drawing to a close. Although the admission process of North Macedonia to the EU was blocked by France, Denmark and the Netherlands in October 2019 (Tidey et al., 2019), in the second half of March 2020 the European Union announced that the block’s 27 members had reached an agreement to open membership negotiations with North Macedonia. Then came another setback on North Macedonia’s road to EU integration when, in November 2020, Bulgaria put a veto on the Negotiation Framework for North Macedonia’s accession talks with the EU. In the second chapter in our book, Robert Hudson presents an outsider’s overview of some of the key issues confronting Macedonia in its transition. This is not presented as a linear historical narrative as such but introduces the reader to some of the key issues confronting Macedonia by placing greater emphasis on more recent events over the past decade. The author recognises that the earlier period of the transition between Macedonian independence in 1991 and the Ohrid Framework Agreement of 2001 has been dealt with most adequately elsewhere, especially by the authors named above in this introduction. Hudson considers Macedonia’s external relations both within the Balkans and further afield—focusing on relations with the five immediate neighbours: Serbia, Bulgaria, Greece, Albania and Kosovo, then with NATO, the EU, the United States and Russia. Special attention is paid to the resolution of the name dispute in the summer of 2018 and the signing of the NATO accession protocol in February 2019. In addition to this, Macedonia’s internal problems are considered, with an emphasis on cultural and identity politics, and concerns and issues of ethnic identity which might arise from internal lingering tensions within the country as well as considering the impact of the 2015 phone tapping scandal and the 2016 Colour Revolution and the corruption, backsliding and state capture impacting on the country’s progress towards European integration. Key questions arising from this chapter centre on the decision by the VMRO-DPMNE government to hold long-postponed elections in December 2016; the absence of government before June 2017 when Zoran Zaev, the leader of SDSM, formed a coalition with three ethnic Albanian parties; delays in Macedonia’s progress in entering NATO and the EU; and the implications of

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the failure of the Przhino Agreement (July 2015) on Macedonia’s EuroAtlantic vision. The chapter also considers the significance of the Prespa Agreement (June 2018) and its ratification in the Greek Parliament in January 2019. Many of these issues are dealt with in greater detail by fellow contributors in subsequent chapters. In the third chapter, Stevo Pendarovski focuses on security and foreign policy in Macedonia since independence. He analyses the internal and external threats and challenges to the country in chronological order and divides his chapter into five distinctive periods, starting with the early post-independence years, when outsiders saw Macedonia as an ‘oasis of peace’ as the chaos and conflict threatened from the North between 1991 and 1995. It was during this period that the Macedonian government and president put their trust in American diplomacy as a guarantee of the survival of the state. Growing international recognition and inclusion in the second half of the 1990s came with NATO offering a role to Macedonia in the Partnership for Peace project, along with an improvement in relations with the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, hitherto seen as the principle external threat to the new state. However, there was a downside to these developments, the key element being Greece’s veto on EU integration and full NATO membership as a result of the name dispute. Pendarovski wryly adds that at the time, virtually nobody could have foreseen that Macedonia would remain in NATO’s waiting room for more than a decade and a half, until the country’s full membership in 2020. Further on, Pendarovski discusses NATO’s conflict with the FRY over Kosovo in 1999 and its impact on Macedonia. In his third section, he considers the crisis in 2001 and its aftermath, at a time when Macedonia almost sank to the status of a failed state, before signing the Ohrid Framework Agreement (OFA) which confirmed the compromise of ethnic Macedonians and ethnic Albanians to have a stake in the common future of the country through a power-sharing mechanism. Pendarovski adds that ever since OFA, interethnic co-habitation has been recognised as a precondition for the survival of the state, adding that any serious destabilisation could not happen now without some external stimulus. The fourth section centres on the Bucharest summit of 2008, which he sees as a milestone, and the newly emerging challenges that have taken place over the last decade. Here, he focuses on the challenge of political Islam and the refugee crisis of the Western Balkan Route, which began in 2012 and reached its peak in 2015/16, before considering the dangers of growing authoritarian tendencies in the country. For Pendarovski at the heart of

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the matter is his belief that Macedonia’s internal legitimacy depends on the genuine implementation of three strategic projects: the Ohrid Framework Agreement; Euro-Atlantic integration; and last, though by no means least in terms of importance, the flourishing of liberal democracy which is intrinsically linked to the former two. Although Macedonia has a number of outstanding issues with its neighbours, relations with Greece remain crucial for its long-term stability and development. Despite the provisions of the UN-backed Interim Accord from 1995, Greece blocked Macedonia’s admission to NATO and the beginning of negotiations for the country’s EU membership. Failure to integrate into these two organisations risked bringing about economic hardship to the country, set against the background of lingering interethnic tensions with the Albanian minority which had escalated into armed conflict in 2001. Given the fragility of the region and the delicate relations with Macedonia’s neighbours, the solution of the name dispute has been crucial throughout the period and has impacted upon the internal stability of Macedonia. In the fourth chapter on ‘The Impossible Reconciliation of Historical Narratives’, Zhidas Daskalovski argues that whilst for a variety of historical reasons Macedonia’s relations have been difficult with all of its neighbours, relations with Greece have been crucial for the long-term stability and development of the country. He opens by providing an overview of the name dispute, since the Macedonian declaration of independence in September 1991, set against the background of the uneasy period of state building confronting the transformation of Macedonian society that culminated in internal armed conflict in 2001. He then explains the Greek position on the name dispute, which has consistently argued that the Republic of Macedonia does not have a historical right to the names of Macedonia and Macedonians. The author goes on to present the Macedonian position on the name dispute and then the clash between national narratives and nation building with references to Benedict Anderson, Anthony Smith, Barbara Jelavich and Pierre Bourdieu inter alia. So, how can the dispute be resolved? Originally writing just before the signing of the Prespa Agreement, Daskalovski presents potential legal and political solutions to the problem in the run-up to the events of June 2018 when the Prespa Agreement was brokered between Alexis Tsipras and Zoran Zaev. For Daskalovski, the issue is not just about Macedonia gaining access to the EU and NATO, but about ensuring Macedonian stability, given that if the EU should

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continue to side with Greece, this might further stimulate ethnic Macedonian nationalism. Such a development might in turn lead to a backlash from the ethnic Albanian minority, encouraged by Kosovo’s independence and the fact that Albania is already a NATO member and moving to ever closer EU integration. Any instability in Macedonia could spill over the borders, causing conflict with Bulgaria, Turkey and Albania. In his postscript written after the signing of the 2018 Prespa Agreement, Daskalovski points out that, beyond potential NATO and EU membership for North Macedonia, critics will argue that a name lies at the heart not only of the individual, but also of a collective identity and that no outside government should waive the Macedonian people’s right to selfdetermination. In the meantime, with the signing of NATO’s accession protocol on 6 February 2019, which was subsequently ratified by NATO’s 29 member countries, on 27 March 2020 North Macedonia eventually became part of the alliance by depositing its instrument of accession. In the fifth chapter entitled ‘The Economic Transition of Macedonia’, Marjan Petreski provides an overview of the performance of the Macedonian economy over the period since the abandoning of the central planning economy until the present day. In particular, he focuses on the thorny road that the country took after gaining its independence from Yugoslavia, whereby Macedonia was rated along with Romania as having endured the worst privatisation processes of the former socialist bloc. This period witnessed the impoverishment of the working class, following trade collapse, large layoffs of the work force, high inflation and a stagnant economy. Petreski explains the separation of Macedonia from the Yugoslav monetary union of the then dinar and the introduction of Macedonia’s own currency, the denar, in a time of galloping prices and empty shelves in the supermarkets. This chapter disentangles the structural policies pursued to reform the economy, as well as the monetary and fiscal policies that were set in order to achieve macroeconomic stability. Specifically, the author explains the set-up and the context of the introduction of the exchange-rate peg to the then German mark and then to the euro, which has continued to function until the present day. Particular emphasis is placed on the impact of the economy of several non-economic processes, such as the intense corruption, state capture and political instability, embargoes, refugee crises and the internal armed conflict, all being prevalent or hitting the country during the period under investigation.

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Petreski also discusses two current topics in the context of Macedonian transition. The first is the emigration ‘crisis’, with the large transfer of the Macedonian workforce to the West, including a brain-drain. This is a problem rooted in the early years of transition which has continued into the present day. It is estimated that more than 250,000 Macedonian citizens (more than 12% of the population) have left the country since 1991, dissatisfied with the poor economic opportunities and the quality of life in Macedonia. The second section focuses on the effect Macedonia’s desire to achieve full membership of the European Union is having on the Macedonian economy to join the European market and face up to subsequent competitive pressure. The final part of the chapter discusses the effects of the recent global economic crisis and the European Debt Crisis on the Macedonian economy. Special consideration is devoted to the effects of the Greek economic crisis on the Macedonian economy, amid the name dispute with Greece which has only recently been resolved. This leads us nicely into the sixth chapter where Hyrije Abazi-Alili analyses the Macedonian transition from a financial perspective. One of the key issues confronting Macedonia in the difficult period which witnessed independence and the early stages of transition was the privatisation of its socially owned enterprises inherited from the Yugoslav self-management system (samoupravuvanje). Abazi-Alili points out how the successor states to Yugoslavia differed from other socialist economies in that property rights and capital were owned by society rather than by the state, so that employees became the direct beneficiaries of the former Yugoslav enterprises. This obviously posed a problem for the newly independent Macedonian government, which was privatising in hazardous times, given the nature of the conflicts breaking out elsewhere in the former Yugoslav republics. In this chapter, Abazi-Alili explains the nature and implications of the 1993 Law on the Transformation of Enterprises with Social Capital. The downside of the privatisation process came after 1993 as managers began to convince, sometimes by use of force, their employees to sell their shares. This ties in with Petreski’s observation in the previous chapter that Macedonia had the highest and ever-increasing unemployment rate of all the former Yugoslav republics, so that the Macedonian, along with the Romanian, privatisation processes were the worst executed ones in all the countries of the former-Socialist bloc. The early period of privatisation was characterised by sackings and forced redundancies, leading to a large number of protests as the government navigated its course through

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an unstable period. To add to the problem, the ethnic Albanian population did not benefit from privatisation to the same extent as the ethnic Macedonian population. This was partly because of greater unemployment amongst this group, exacerbated by lower education standards by comparison with the ethnic Macedonians, which all led to their underrepresentation in managerial positions, with few ethnic Albanians actually understanding what shares were actually all about. It is possible that this sense of being disadvantaged by the whole privatisation process might have fed into the sense of grievance that eventually surfaced in the armed insurrection of 2001. During the 2000s, the Macedonian government launched an intensive investment promotion campaign to attract foreign investors into the country. So that, from a financial perspective, in the second decade of the century there were clear signs that the Macedonian transition was coming to an end. Ever since gaining independence in 1991, the Republic of Macedonia established the plurality of political parties as one of the foundations of its political system. In the seventh chapter, Nenad Markovikj shows how this was based on a very liberal framework for party formation, and how in the early years of its democratic transition, Macedonia started out as a fragmented political system, evolving from a four-party system with two prominent Macedonian and two prominent Albanian parties occasionally evolving into a political system with a predominant party. The development of the party system has also been accompanied by the change of as many electoral models: first, a majoritarian model, between 1990 and 1998; then a mixed majoritarian and proportional model, between 1998 and 2002; and finally, D’Hondt’s proportional model, between 2002 and the present. In addition to this, there have been fundamental constitutional changes arising out of the Ohrid Framework Agreement of 2001. It becomes clear that Macedonia is notorious when it comes to political clientelism in which personal and political ties are essential in acquiring a job, and that Macedonian politics is based on a complete blurring of the separation of powers, so that the wiretapping scandal of 2015 was the outcome of a classical clientele and patronage system. Markovikj paints a pretty grim picture, commenting on how Macedonia suffers from one of the lowest levels of social trust in the Balkans. He argues that low confidence in the institutions and the existence of one of the lowest levels of social capital by comparison with the rest of the Balkan region put Macedonia in the group of mistrust societies where political ties are built,

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based on kinship and solidarity groups, rather than on authentic political affiliation or political interest. He goes on to argue that whilst the development of the political party scene, accompanied by an evolving electoral and constitutional framework, has changed the political landscape of Macedonia, it has failed to change two fundamental features of the political process in the country. Markovikj is referring to: the highly undemocratic and even ‘sultanistic’ nature of the political parties and the constant spill over of the political process from the borders of the political system into ‘idiosyncratic forms’ of democracy. These ‘idiosyncratic forms’ entail everything from leaders’ meetings to the intervention of extra-constitutional political actors such as the international community. In addition to all of this, there are those interethnic negotiations at the level of ethnic groups with regard to political battles carried out by party ‘negotiators’ posing as ethnic entrepreneurs. Without the start of accession negotiations with the EU, Macedonia is the only country, apart from Turkey, which has experienced such a longdelayed status in the EU integration process. So argues Blerim Reka in the eighth chapter of this book, entitled ‘Macedonia’s Euro-Atlantic Integration’. The author comments on how in the first decade of independence Macedonia had established official bilateral relations with the EU, but that since the Bucharest summit in 2008, when Greece vetoed Macedonia’s NATO membership bid, both the European Union and NATO accession of the country were put on hold. Reka argues that remaining outside EU integration and NATO membership brought Macedonia’s future into question. Nevertheless, if Macedonia had been confronted with one major external issue for such a long time, namely the name dispute with Greece, this situation would eventually be resolved following the signing of the Prespa Agreement of June 2018, and in due course, North Macedonia was welcomed into NATO as the thirtieth member state, in March 2020. Yet, just as it looked as though the country could finally start negotiating entry into the EU, Bulgaria put a veto on the Negotiation Framework for North Macedonia’s accession talks with the EU in November 2019, based on Bulgaria’s rejection of North Macedonia’s historical, cultural and linguistic identity. However, these two external issues apart, the focus of Reka’s chapter is an analysis of the two key internal processes which were designated by the EU and NATO as being pre-conditions for any further Euro-Atlantic integration of the republic, namely greater interethnic reconciliation following the 2001 Ohrid Framework Agreement and greater intra-ethnic

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political dialogue, through the 2015 Przhino Agreement. Reka analyses the challenging internal domestic issues over the greater democratisation of the country with evidence of scandals, political corruption and state capture with reference to the ‘tape scandals’, the Przhino Process and the failure of the Office of the Special Prosecutor to bring allegations of political corruption to the criminal courts. Whilst the author acknowledges the importance of relations with external neighbours, and the need to end historical disputes with Bulgaria, as in the case of having ended the name dispute with Greece, he argues that at the end of the day internal intra-ethnic relations and building a democratic, functional and multiethnic state are crucial to the future stability of North Macedonia and the broader region as a whole, particularly when set against the background of the changing geopolitical situation in Europe and the growing influence of non-Euro-Atlantic powers. Resolving these internal disputes is also crucial to the process of North Macedonia’s integration into the EU. When dealing with migration and its effect on Macedonia, four specific dates during the country’s long transition spring to mind: 1991, 1992, 1999 and 2015. The year 1991 witnessed the attempted migration of ethnic Macedonians from Albania into Macedonia, mainly from the southern and western shores of Lake Ohrid. These Albanian Macedonians were looking for better living conditions and legal settlement in Macedonia, yet they were encouraged by the Macedonian authorities to remain in the country in which their families had been living for several centuries, and with the passage of time successive Macedonian governments lobbied for an improvement in the political status of ethnic Macedonians in Albania. The spring of 1992 witnessed a larger migration of some 90,000 refugees into Macedonia, mostly Bošnjaks (Bosnian Muslims) from Bosnia and Hercegovina who were fleeing the conflict raging in their country between 1992 and 1995. This influx of migrants and refugees placed considerable pressure on the Macedonian infrastructure at the time. Then came NATO’s conflict with Serbia over Kosovo—the 78-day war in 1999 which brought in a massive influx of 360,000 Kosovar Albanians fleeing persecution from the Serbian authorities (operation Horseshoe) which came in direct response to NATO bombardments of Yugoslavia. The 1999 migration not only threatened the institutional capacities of the recently independent state by impacting upon Macedonia’s health, welfare and educational infrastructure, but also threatened a considerable

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imbalance to the ethnic make-up of the country as the temporary residents made up 17% of the population, in addition to the approximately 23% ethnic Albanian population already living in the country. So, when it comes to any potentially significant increase in the number of migrants entering and transiting the country in 2015 and 2016, one can begin to understand how this might have been disconcerting not only for many EU member states and Western Balkan countries in general, but for the Republic of Macedonia in particular. Indeed, in 2015 the largest number of refugees and migrants who entered Europe was registered as reaching one million before the end of December in what was an outstanding moment in the history of migration movements. Admittedly, most migrants and refugees saw Macedonia as a transit country rather than as a country of final destination which led to the state institutions working more on facilitating transit, rather than improving the national asylum system. Marina Andeva takes up on this theme in her chapter on ‘Migration Movements and Their Implications for Macedonia’, pointing out that the flow of migrants and refugees from Africa, the Middle East and South Asia has presented all European leaders and policymakers with their greatest challenge since the beginning of the European economic crisis in 2008. In Andeva’s opinion, the Republic of Macedonia and its role within the Balkan Route is seen as being of crucial importance and is frequently disputed. In her chapter, she attempts to present the Macedonian experiences with migration movements by focusing first on the right of the free movement of people and Macedonia’s position in the face of recent emigration issues and analyses the Macedonian legal framework in the field of illegal migration and asylum and whether or not the country’s regulatory framework is in compliance with EU measures on asylum and refugees. In Andeva’s opinion, Macedonia has stepped up to the plate and faced up to protecting the EU borders, even though it is as yet a non-EU, non-Schengen state. Yet, for all this, Macedonia has been accused of having used the migration crisis to override its democratic commitments, whilst Greece has accused Macedonia as having ‘shamed’ Europe by using plastic bullets, stun grenades and tear gas to beat back refugees from the border gates between Macedonia and Greece. Sadly, one remembers the images on television at the time. Yet, at the end of the day, in spite of the fact Macedonia is not as yet a member state of the EU, Andeva demonstrates that Macedonian legislation has to a large extent complied with EU

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standards and regulations primarily in the policy areas of common procedures for granting international protection, determining refugee status and providing temporary protection and reception conditions. On the upside, the country has managed to remain calm in spite of the external and internal political factors in place, whilst the state has continued to put a lot of effort into aligning its legislation with the EU acquis , providing yet another reason for accelerating Macedonia’s integration into the EU. Ivan Dodovski opens his chapter on recent Macedonian identity politics and a post-Yugoslav revisionist discourse that focuses on the claims of antiquity in fiction and drama with a personal reflection of a childhood visit with his father to the site of an ancient city built by Philip II of Macedon, near his hometown of Bitola. Here, he explains that in the 1980s the officially sanctioned discourse in the then Socialist Republic of Macedonia served to minimise the importance of ancient Macedonian history and to celebrate the Slavonic origin of the Macedonian people fitting in with Tito’s Yugoslav project of brotherhood and unity. Dodovski identifies an identity shift or a ‘return to antiquity’ following the break-up of the Yugoslav federation in 1991, with a shift from the Slavonic origins of Macedonian cultural identity to an ancient Macedonian representation of the country’s ethnogenesis. The author then goes on to consider some of the causes that underpin this revised narrative of Macedonian national identity. Building on comments made by Hudson in the second chapter, he refers to how Macedonian cultural identity was contested by Bulgarian and Greek denials throughout the twentieth century, and he explains how the ‘anticomania’ or ‘antiquisation’ ostensibly culminated in the controversial ‘Skopje 2014’ project. (This subject is taken up in the next chapter by Loreta Georgievska-Jakovleva.) Dodovski comments on how a generation of Macedonian scholars would pursue postgraduate studies in Western universities and search for a new national narrative in a bid to win sympathy in the West. Perhaps, the most noted example would be that of Vasil Tupurkovski, a former highranking official of the Federal Yugoslav government and a professor of International Law at the University of Skopje, who would write several books on the ancient history of Macedonia. As one wit would have it, he went to the United States as a lawyer and returned as a historian. In Macedonia itself, public opinion is divided over the ‘return to antiquity’. Some believe that Alexander the Great can be a focal point of unification in a divided society dominated by ethnic Macedonians

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and ethnic Albanians. Others believe that ‘anticomania’ and ‘Skopje 2014’ have deepened both the interethnic (Macedonian–Albanian) and intra-ethnic (Macedonian) rifts in the country. The author goes on to consider modern Macedonian writers who had shown hardly any interest in ancient Macedonian topics until the 1990s when fiction and poetry books about Alexander the Great began to multiply. He then analyses one prize-winning novel, Alexander and Death (1992), by Slobodan Mickovikj, and focuses on two celebrated theatre performances which more directly refract recent identity politics in Macedonia. They are the spectacle Macedoine—Osyssey 2001 and the play Alexander (2005) by Ljubisha Georgievski. Dodovski’s conclusion is that it might take a generation or two for matters to be resolved. The theme of ‘antiquisation’ is continued in the penultimate chapter of our book by Loreta Georgievska-Jakovleva who focuses on the dissonant narratives of the Skopje 2014 project. Launched by former premier Nikola Gruevski in 2010, Skopje 2014 set out to create and retell a Macedonian national identity through monuments and monumental architecture in the country’s capital city. It narrated the story of the continuity of Macedonians from the Ancient period to the present day, representing a ‘glorious past’ and a ‘victorious’ self-image to help resolve the country’s identity crisis, whilst trying to bring the people together by forging national identity through a common and shared history. At the same time, the project aimed at demonstrating the legitimacy of the country and its right to become a member of the European Union and NATO under its own constitutional name. Initially, the project was rather well received by the general public. However, there were growing dissonant voices who felt that Skopje 2014 reinforced ethnic nationalism, yet failed to contribute to national unity, but instead divided the country, as the project recreated a national identity from a Slavonic one to an ancient one. Unfortunately, Skopje 2014 has also provoked negative reactions from Macedonia’s neighbouring countries, especially Bulgaria and Greece who feel that their past has been misappropriated. This does little to improve Macedonia’s relations with its neighbours, thereby complicating the EU and NATO accession processes even further. Things came to a head in the Spring of 2015 with the Colourful Revolution in protest against President Gjorgje Ivanov and Prime Minister Gruevski. This protest arose when President Ivanov controversially decided to stop—by an act of amnesty—the investigation into Gruevski and other politicians who were allegedly involved in

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the wiretapping scandal, government cover-ups and the misappropriation of public funds. At the end of the day, Gergievska-Jakovleva argues that public art in Macedonia has become a contested site rather than fulfilling the previous government’s idea of using Skopje 2014s statues and buildings as symbols of public identification. Just as Macedonia’s long and difficult relationship with Greece over the name dispute had been brought to a close, following the signing of the Prespa Agreement, another crisis based on ethno-linguistic identity appeared on the country’s horizon, once again blocking North Macedonia’s EU accession ambitions. What, at first sight in 2018, appeared to be a mere academic dispute over historical narrative and language politics between Bulgaria and North Macedonia has been transmogrified into a potentially serious crisis with disconcerting implications on North Macedonia’s progress. The final chapter in our book by Ognen Vangelov provides the reader with an up-to-date analysis of the historical background to Bulgaria’s claims on Macedonian ethno-linguistic identity, its impact and implications. Although the two countries had signed a bilateral Friendship Treaty in August 2017, it would appear that Bulgaria’s official stance towards North Macedonia had radicalised following the signing of the Prespa Agreement in which Articles 1 and 7 had acknowledged the existence of the Macedonian language and the right of the people of North Macedonia to call themselves Macedonians, whilst stipulating their cultural, historical and linguistic distinctiveness. Vangelov demonstrates how this acknowledgement ran counter to the Bulgarian belief that the Macedonian people and language had their origins in Bulgaria, that the country had rewritten and appropriated the history of the Bulgarian people after 1944, and that North Macedonia should renounce any idea of a Macedonian ethnic community on the territory of Bulgaria. Although the origins of these Bulgarian claims can be traced back to grievances felt after the Treaty of San Stefano in 1878, or even back to the time of Sts. Cyril and Methodius in the ninth century, it would appear that the Bulgarian government is today using North Macedonia’s desire to enter the EU as leverage for their own ethno-linguistic ambitions. Indeed, it is fairly obvious that Sofia had taken note of the final agreement signed at Prespa between Greece and North Macedonia, particularly Article 8 which called for a review of the ‘status of monuments, public buildings and infrastructures’ on the territory of North Macedonia and the establishment

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of a ‘Joint Inter-disciplinary Committee of Experts on historic, archaeological and educational matters… to ensure in each of the Parties that no school textbooks or school auxiliary material in use the year after the signing of this Agreement contains any irredentist/revisionist references’. The reader should note that Vangelov is himself a member of the Joint Multidisciplinary Expert Commission on Historical and Educational Issues between North Macedonia and Bulgaria. Vangelov explains how the swift change in circumstances in 1878 between the treaties of San Stefano and Berlin witnessed the return of Macedonia to the Ottoman Empire, thereby stoking the fires of Bulgarian revanchism, which would be exacerbated by Bulgarian defeats in the First and Second Balkan Wars and defeat in the First World War. Perhaps, from a Bulgarian historiographical perspective, the dispute can even be traced back to the ninth century and Sts. Cyril and Methodius who evangelised the Slavs through the spread of Old Church Slavonic and the use of the Glagolitic and Cyrillic alphabets, in which the Bulgarian narrative portrays the language as ‘Old-Bulgarian’ and Cyril and Methodius and their disciples, such as St. Naum of Ohrid as Bulgarian. In more recent times, the Bulgarian narrative informs us that the idea of a separate Macedonian identity and language since 1944 is little more than a Titoist construction and that the country’s modified name, since the signing of the Prespa Agreement, of North Macedonia, should always be referred to as Republic of North Macedonia, to avoid any implication of Macedonian irredentism vis-à-vis Pirin Macedonia in present-day Bulgaria. Thereby, bringing back memories of the absurd use of the term ‘Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM)’ insisted on by Greece. In summary, it is fairly evident that Bulgaria is using its advantage as an EU member state to veto North Macedonia’s entry into the EU as potential political leverage for the acknowledgement of its own long-standing historical and ethno-religious claims, thereby internationalising a bilateral dispute, and denying the existence of a separate Macedonian ethnic identity and language. At the end of the day, a solution to this dispute must be found. In the words of President Pendarovski, in an interview on New Year’s Eve 2021, ‘An important litmus test whether you are ready to one day be part of the European Union is whether you are ready to have productive cooperation with the first neighbours and those who are in the same region’ (Sloboden pecat, 2021).

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Over the past thirty years, a plethora of books, academic articles, eye-witness memoirs and reportage has been published in the English language on the history, culture and politics of Bosnia, Croatia, Serbia and Kosovo, alongside general histories of Yugoslavia and its successor states. By contrast, relatively little has been published in book format by British and American publishing houses that has been exclusively devoted to ‘post-Yugoslav’ Macedonia and its transition, other than some key works mentioned above in this introduction. Those works are now rather dated, although they offer significant insight into the first decade of Macedonia’s post-socialist transition. Tremendous events have impacted on Macedonia over the last decade and what this book sets out to achieve is to bring the story of Macedonia’s thirty-year-long transition right up to date.

References Pendarovski, S. (2015). Electoral authoritarianism at the end of the transition in the Western Balkans. In Z. Milovanovic & I. Dodovski (Eds.), Thucydides vs. Kant in our time: Reconsidering the concepts of war and peace—Essays in Honour of Professor Dr. Gáspár Bíró (pp. 73–88). UACS. Pettifer, J. (2001). The new Macedonian question. Palgrave Macmillan. Phillips, J. (2002). Macedonia: Warlords and Rebels in the Balkans. I.B. Tauris. Poulton, H. (1995, 2000). Who are the Macedonians? Hurst. Rossos, A. (2008). Macedonia and the Macedonian: A history. Hoover Institution Press. Sloboden pecat. (2021, January 30). Pendarovski: How we cooperate with our neighbors shows how ready we are for the EU . https://www.slobodenpecat. mk/en/pendarovski-od-toa-kolku-sorabotuvame-so-sosedite-se-gleda-kolkusme-podgotveni-za-eu/. Accessed 3 April 2021. Tidey, A., Chadwick, L., & Koutsokosta, E. (2019, October 18). ‘A grave historic error’: Juncker hits out as North Macedonia and Albania have EU bids blocked. Euronews. https://www.euronews.com/2019/10/18/fra nce-denmark-and-netherlands-block-albania-s-eu-membership-bid. Accessed 3 April 2020.

CHAPTER 2

Macedonia’s Long Transition: An Overview of the Key Issues Robert Hudson

After Kosovo and Montenegro, Macedonia is the third smallest state in South-eastern Europe, and in 2015, it had an estimated population of 2.1 million (World Bank, 2016). However, since that estimate was made, the country has witnessed a considerable reduction in population to 1,836,713 according to the latest census taken in the country in 2021 by comparison with the previous census of 2002. It is interesting to note the ethnic diversity of the total resident population in the country with 58.44% declaring themselves as Macedonians, 24.30% as Albanians, 3.86% as Turks, 2.53% as Roma, 1.30% as Serbs, 0.87% as Bosniaks and 0.47% as Vlachs (State Statistical Office, 2021). Blighted by its economic geography, as some would see it, Macedonia is a land-locked state with poor infrastructure, scarce natural resources, and a small market potential. Having been the poorest of the former

R. Hudson (B) University of Derby, Derby, UK e-mail: [email protected] University American College Skopje, Skopje, North Macedonia

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 R. Hudson and I. Dodovski (eds.), Macedonia’s Long Transition, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-20773-0_1

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Yugoslav republics, Macedonia had been economically challenged from the start (Liotta & Jebb, 2002, p. 65). The country was hit by the 2008 global financial crisis, and the 2009 European Debt Crisis, whilst the realities of high youth unemployment calculated at 52.5% in 2014 continued to cause concern (Stevkovski, 2014, p. 69). The 2021 census shows that the young and educated are leaving the country in large numbers, partly as a result of poor economic growth and a lack of investment, as well as increasing weariness with constant delays in the European integration process. Troubles during the transition arising from political corruption, back sliding and state capture alongside the bleak prospects of EU integration are also to blame for the population decline. Since independence in 1991, many Macedonians hoped that the promise of quick integration into the EU would improve the country’s economic and social condition. But this has been blocked over three decades, first by Greece and currently by Bulgaria. There have also been lingering internal tensions, which occasionally erupted into violence, such as the shoot-out on 9 May 2015, in the town of Kumanovo in northern Macedonia between Macedonian police and an armed group which identified itself with the National Liberation Army (Dempsey, 2015). Although this event could be traced back to the armed conflict between Albanian separatists and the Macedonian Army in 2001, it was more directly related to dissatisfaction with the running of the 2014 general elections, allegations of widespread corruption, nepotism, kleptocracy and the scandal over the illegal wiretap recordings of 20,000 Macedonian citizens which had emerged at the beginning of 2015.1 Macedonia has also been deeply affected by migration. There had been 90,000 mostly Bosniak refugees from the war in Bosnia-Hercegovina between 1992–1995; then, in the spring of 1999, a further 360,000 refugees crossed over the borders from Kosovo, the equivalent of 17% of Macedonia’s total population, potentially raising inter-ethnic tensions with the possibility of a permanent change to the ethnic balance of the country and stretching institutional capacities to their limits (Pendarovski, 2011, pp. 38, 51). More recently, Macedonia has been affected by the current European refugee crisis that had grown exponentially throughout 2015 and 2016. In many ways Macedonia can be defined by its foreign relations (Hudson, 2016), and this will form the main theme of this chapter. Some academics have even commented on how Macedonia’s very survival may well be linked to external sources (Liotta & Jebb, 2002, p. 59), and

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any study of Macedonian history through the late modern period clearly demonstrates the extent to which Macedonia has had problems with its immediate neighbours. Occupied twice by Bulgaria and twice by Serbia before being incorporated into the Kingdom, then the Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia. Furthermore, Macedonia has had problems with all of its immediate neighbours since gaining independence for the first time in 1991, which have hampered Skopje’s foreign relations and the country’s bid to seek international recognition, thereby prolonging Macedonia’s transition (Rossos, 2008, p. 267). Macedonia has had a long dispute with Bulgaria, which at times has denied the very existence of a Macedonian nation, culture and identity, refusing to recognise the Macedonian language as a separate language from Bulgarian. Since independence, there was the long-running name dispute with Greece, which delayed Macedonian entry into both the European Union and NATO, thereby fuelling the prolongation of Macedonia’s long transition. This situation seemed to have been resolved, following the Prespa agreement in June 2018 and the signing of the accession protocol with NATO in February 2019. However, problems with Bulgaria over Macedonia’s ethno-linguistic identity flared up again in November 2020 and continue to hamper North Macedonia’s ambitions to join the EU. Meanwhile, Albania had frequently raised concerns over the rights of the large ethnic Albanian community in Macedonia. In addition, Serbia continued to deny the autocephaly of the Macedonian Orthodox Church, although this issue would be resolved in May 2022. After thirty years of transition, Macedonia’s future is essential to the future European security architecture, especially in the Western Balkans. Yet, Macedonia’s problems are unique and quite different to those of all the other so-called Yugoslav successor states. This chapter explains some of the key issues, many of which are taken up further in the ensuing chapters of this book. Six key areas seem all interlinked and related to each other in explaining where Macedonia stands today, and they are as follows: ● ● ● ● ●

Macedonia’s relations with its five neighbouring states The name dispute with Greece and its resolution The Euro-Atlantic project Illegal wiretapping and the Colourful Revolution Corruption, backsliding and state capture

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● Relations between Macedonia and Russia. This chapter concludes with an appraisal of the current situation following the ending of the name dispute with the Prespa Agreement between representatives of the Greek and Macedonian governments in June 2018, its ratification in the Greek parliament on 25 January 2019 and the renewed push on the Euro-Atlantic project concerning EU integration and membership of NATO.

Macedonia’s Relations with Its Five Neighbouring States Macedonia is surrounded by five neighbouring states. They are Serbia in the North, Bulgaria in the East, Greece in the South, Albania in the West, and, since February 2008, Kosovo (formerly part of Serbia) in the Northwest. Each neighbouring country will be dealt with in turn, whilst relations with Greece will be dealt with under a separate heading. Serbia Macedonia’s story is very different from that of the other Yugoslav successor states in the whole process of the break-up of Yugoslavia. As the former Yugoslavia fragmented in 1991, there was little desire among the Republic’s leading politicians to break-away from what had become ‘rump’-Yugoslavia, or the ‘third’ Yugoslavia, led by Serbia and Montenegro.2 Indeed, according to Rossos (2008, p. 261): ‘Most Macedonians valued the benefits of the [Yugoslav] federation. Membership gave them a sense of security both against unfriendly, even antagonistic neighbours, Bulgaria, Greece, and, to a certain extent, Albania and against condescending and patronising Serbia’. Pendarovski (2011, p. 62) adds that one of the reasons why Macedonia is so keen to enter the European Union is because of its former membership of the Yugoslav federation. Once again this underlines the idea that being part of a greater political entity strengthens and provides greater security for Macedonia, which is a very small state. Certainly, in the first decade of its existence as an independent state, Macedonia had avoided the fate of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia and Slovenia, by seceding from Yugoslavia without a shot being fired (Phillips, 2004,

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p. 78). In the aftermath of independence, President Kiro Gligorov referred to the then Socialist Republic as an ‘oasis of peace’, and it appeared as though Macedonia provided the one zone of stability in the troubled region. When independence was declared on 8 September 1991, following a referendum which had resulted in 95.26% of the population voting in favour of independence,3 there were concerns for the security of the newly independent country with the potential of invasion from the north. Pendarovski (2011, p. 30) goes on to add that the mere presence of the JNA (Yugoslav Peoples’ Army) on Macedonian soil had presented a considerable challenge to the emerging independence movement. Indeed, the main security threat to the Macedonian state throughout the 1990s had been Serbia, and throughout the first half of the 1990s, the Serbs expected Macedonia to re-join rump-Yugoslavia. The Belgrade political elite denied the independence of Macedonia, as they had denied the Montenegrin and Kosovar Albanian push towards independence throughout the 1990s, designating Macedonia as ‘Southern Serbia’. There was historical precedent for this as Belgrade had once ruled Macedonia directly during the period of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia (1918–1941) and before the Bulgarian invasion during the Second World War. One derogatory comment in Serbia during the early 1990s was that the Macedonian language was little more than ‘Serbian with a stutter’. In a bid to resolve the looming crisis between Serbia and Macedonia in the wake of the break-up of the rest of Yugoslavia, the reaction of the UN Security Council (resolution 842) would be to approve the deployment of an additional 300 troops, under the auspices of UNPROFOR (the United Nations Protection Force), to prevent any spill over from the conflict to the north of the country. In 1995, this would increase to 1,100 troops, mainly from the Scandinavian countries, but with a small, yet politically significant contingent from the United States. This mission would be rebranded as UNPREDEP (the United Nations Preventive Deployment Force). In the meantime, Macedonia also became a member of NATO’s PfP (Partnership for Peace) programme in 1995. At the end of the day, the reality for Belgrade was that the Serbian population in Macedonia, at just 35,939 Serbs (1.78% of the population of Macedonia), according to the 2002 census, was just too small to justify Serbian irredentist claims. And, apart from the Serbian Orthodox Church failing to recognise the independence of the Macedonian Orthodox Church until May 2022, relations between the two states have generally eased over the last twenty years. The one exception to this was

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Macedonia’s role in the war over Kosovo. And tensions particularly arose between Serbia and Macedonia when the latter recognised the independence of Kosovo in 2009. Serbia immediately declared the Macedonian ambassador to Belgrade as persona non grata (Pendarovski, 2011, p. 96). Otherwise, the only lingering quibble has been the decision of the Serbian Orthodox Church to deny Macedonian access to the Prohor Pchinjski Monastery, on Ilinden (2 August) for official celebrations which had been common before 1991 in the former Yugoslavia, when the Church had no control over the premises. The Prohor Pchinjski Monastery had been ceded to Serbia after the Second World War yet continues to have some hold on Macedonian identity because this is where the modern state of Macedonia was born with the creation of The Anti-Fascist Assembly for the People’s Liberation of Macedonia (ASNOM—Antifashistichko sobranie na narodnoto osloboduvanje na Makedonija) in 1944 with Metodija Andonov-Chento as the first president of the Socialist Republic of Macedonia in the Federal Peoples Republic of Yugoslavia (FNRJ). Bulgaria There has been a long historical dispute between Bulgaria and Macedonia which has its origins in the two Treaties of San Stefano and Berlin in 1878, when for a brief period of three months, Bulgaria was initially granted Macedonia from the Ottoman Empire resulting in the creation of a Greater Bulgaria, before the Treaty of Berlin gave much of the territory of Vardar Macedonia back to the Sultan, thereby leading to future conflicts between Bulgaria, Turkey, Greece and Serbia in the Balkan Wars of 1912 and 1913. Bulgaria would occupy Macedonia in the First World War, and again during the Second World War; during which periods all sense of a Macedonian language and cultural identity were crushed by the Bulgarian occupiers. For almost three decades of Macedonian independence, Sofia has consistently denied the human rights of ethnic Macedonians living in the region of Pirin Macedonia in Bulgaria and has claimed that the Macedonian people were ‘invented’ by Tito. The main Macedonian complaint about Bulgaria is that instead of moving forward towards developing greater regional cooperation, Bulgaria always lapses into historical grievances. Meanwhile, Sofia has also denied the existence of a separate Macedonian language, referring to it as a western-Bulgarian dialect.This

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was reignited in the early 1990s, but resolved by 1999, when the old diplomatic formula, ‘signed in the Macedonian and Bulgarian languages’ was replaced by the phrase: ‘This document was signed in the Macedonian language in accordance with the Constitution of the Republic of Macedonia and the Bulgarian language in accordance with the Constitution of the Republic of Bulgaria’ (Pendarovski, 2011, p. 49). At the time it appeared as though the two countries had found a compromise solution to their differences over language politics. Then, in 2017 a treaty was signed between prime ministerial counterparts Zoran Zaev and Boyko Borisov which was a follow up to the Declaration of 1999. It used the same ‘formula’, but in addition envisaged a bilateral expert commission on historical and educational issues to discuss the two countries’ ‘shared history’. The only concern over this from a Macedonian perspective is that Bulgaria could use this aspect of identity politics as a form of political leverage over Macedonia’s integration into the EU. Moreover, the Bulgarian parliament passed a Declaration on 10 October 2019 which listed the preconditions which Macedonia must meet to satisfy Bulgarian demands. The text opens with a reference to North Macedonia fulfilling the Copenhagen criteria rules passed by the European Council in 1993 which define whether or not a country is eligible to join the EU including the demand for good-neighbourly relations significant to the Republic of Bulgaria. This includes the Bulgarian claim on the Macedonian language as being ‘official according to the constitution’, thereby implying that it is merely a dialect of Bulgarian, and that Macedonia should acknowledge what Bulgaria perceives as being the shared history prior to 1944. In other words, that shared history prior to 1944 was in effect Bulgarian history. The Declaration actually calls for the creation of a ‘Joint Multidisciplinary Expert Commission on Historical and Educational Issues, which will be reflected in the curricula and materials as soon as possible’ (Bulgarian Parliament, 2019). Clearly, the Bulgarian government was taking its cue from reading Article 8, Section 5 of the Prespa Agreement (2018) between the Greek, and the Macedonian governments, in which the Greek government proposed that: Experts on historic, archaeological, and educational matters, to consider the objective, scientific interpretation of historical events based on authentic, evidence-based and scientifically sound historical sources and archaeological findings. The Committee’s work shall be supervised by the Ministries of Foreign Affairs of the Parties in cooperation with other

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competent national authorities. It shall consider and, if it deems appropriate, revise any school textbooks and school auxiliary material such as maps, historical atlases, teaching guides, in use in each of the Parties that no school textbooks or school auxiliary material such as maps, historical atlases, teaching guides, in use in each of the Parties, in accordance with the principles and aims of UNESCO and the Council of Europe. To that effect, the Committee shall set specific timetables so as to ensure in each of the Parties that no school textbooks or school auxiliary material in use the year after the signing of the Agreement contains any irredentist/revisionist references.

The Bulgarian Declaration (2019) also demanded that North Macedonia should renounce the existence of an ethnic Macedonian minority in Bulgaria, rehabilitate the victims in Macedonia who were allegedly repressed during communist Yugoslavia because of their ‘Bulgarian national consciousness’, and stop the alleged propaganda or hate speech against Bulgaria and ethnic Bulgarians who are citizens of Macedonia. One passage which really stands out is that the Declaration: ‘[stresses] that the opening of negotiations should not be interpreted as a guarantee of membership of the European Union, but as an incentive to accelerate reforms, strengthen the rule of law and maintain good-neighbourly relations’, thereby fuelling Macedonian concerns that Bulgaria is prepared to use this declaration as political leverage for blocking the integration of North Macedonia as a member state of the EU. Further delay in commencing accession talks between Bulgaria and North Macedonia could be easily exploited by Russia and China in a bid to increase their influence in the western Balkans. Albania From an Albanian perspective, the real dispute between Macedonia and Albania was based upon the conditions of ethnic Albanians living within Macedonian territorial space. Originally, Albania advocated a federal or cantonal structure of Macedonia, similar to the post-Dayton situation in Bosnia-Hercegovina, Belgium, or the Swiss cantons (Pendarovski, 2011, p. 98). However, after the conflict over Kosovo (1999) and the insurgency of 2001, the situation was largely resolved by the implementation of the Ohrid Framework Agreement, which has greatly improved the conditions of ethnic Albanians in Macedonia. Ethnic Albanians now have their own

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Albanian language universities in Tetovo and Skopje, and wherever the population of Albanians exceeds 20% the Albanian language is used by the state authorities. The new 2019 law on languages has expanded these rights to the entire territory of the country, making Albanian a second official language in all national and local institutions (Radio Free Europe, 2019). There have been occasional internal disturbances, though—such as the demonstrations and rioting in Skopje in 2012 and 2013 and the aforementioned shoot-out in Kumanovo in May 2015. Whilst a number of Albanian nationalists have advocated the creation of an Albanian republic within Macedonia,4 it should also be noted that Albanian nationalists take their claims as far back as an ancient, though disputed Illyrian past in the fifth century B.C. The other issue is that the very name of Macedonia has been identified with the Slav population and not the ethnic Albanians (Pendarovski, 2011; Rossos, 2008). Following an absence of government in the aftermath of the 11 December 2016 elections, it would take four months before President Ivanov would call on Zoran Zaev, leader of the Social Democrats (SDSM) to form a coalition government in April 2017. The coalition government included three Albanian political parties, which were militating for improved rights for ethnic Albanians in the country. One party, the BESA even advocated the partition of the country into an ethnic Albanian part in the West and Northwest and a Slavophone Macedonia in the rest of the country. Kosovo The real issue with Kosovo had been the threat of security spillovers in 1999 and 2001. Throughout the 1990s and in the first decade of this century, there was genuine concern over how the situation in Kosovo would impact upon Macedonia. NATO’s conflict with Serbia over Kosovo in 1999 witnessed the potential threat of internal destabilisation with the influx of 360,000 Kosovar Albanian refugees threatening the ethnic make-up and stability of Macedonia. This was in addition to the stationing of 19,000 NATO troops in the country. There were also tensions over the way refugees were received by Macedonia in 1999, which led to lingering tensions between the two countries. This was followed by the insurgency of 2001, when the internal ethnic Albanian NLA (National Liberation Army) was being

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officered, supported and supplied by the KLA (Kosovo Liberation Army). However, since the signing of the Ohrid Framework Agreement that year, relations between Kosovo and Macedonia have greatly improved. Macedonia recognised Kosovo as an independent state in 2008, and duly came in for criticism by the Serbian government. On the negative side, there were feelings inside Macedonia that Kosovo was not a fully-fledged state. And, rather like the case with Albania, there were concerns within Kosovo over the condition of ethnic Albanians within Macedonia. Although, since the Ohrid Framework Agreement, these conditions have been steadily improving. Macedonia, by contrast, within Kosovo has been seen as a more mature inter-ethnic democracy and an EU candidate country (Daskalovski, 2008). The conditions that led to the outbreak of ethnic violence in Macedonia in 2001 are not prevalent at the moment. Some major issues have been modified or resolved (Daskalovski, 2008). The real issue today is whether or not Kosovo will partition. To some extent this is already a de facto reality in the case of Mitrovica in the north and the territory to the north of the Ibar river, with a Serbian majority population which de facto lies outside the control of Kosovan institutions (Daskalovski, 2008). From a Macedonian perspective, the overriding concern is that Macedonia is too small a country to partition any further, which provides the impetus for adhering to the Ohrid accords.

The Name Dispute with Greece and Its Resolution Although Macedonia has had a number of outstanding issues with its neighbours, as demonstrated in the previous section, relations with Greece remain crucial for the long-term stability of the country. Beyond doubt, since the declaration of independence, the name dispute with Greece has been the biggest foreign policy challenge confronting Macedonia over the past three decades. It has also been one of the greatest issues confronting Macedonia’s position in Europe and the wider world, because this dispute has been the main stumbling block in the country’s bid to enter both NATO and the EU. Unofficially, and at first sight, the dispute can be traced back to the Greek Civil War (1946–1949), as most of the Slav-Macedonian minority in northern Greece had joined the Greek Communist Party and as many as an estimated 15 to 20,000 enlisted in the Democratic Army of Greece. Expelled ethnic Macedonians who had served in the Democratic Army

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were still forbidden from returning to Greece, until the amnesty in 2004, whereas the language was banned until recently and Macedonian identity was declared non-existent by the Greek state.5 Approximately, 30,000 settled in the then Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. The key problem for the Greeks is not only about fears of Macedonian irredentism, but also that if the Macedonian population were to be recognised it could lead to returning Macedonians laying claim to property that had been lost at the end of the Greek Civil War. The name dispute is also linked with the issue of Aegean Macedonia, going back to 1921 (Rossos, 2008), and indeed to the Second Balkan War of 1913 (Christopoulos, 2019). So, irredentism enters into the frame, and this is reflected in popular culture, folk music and folklore to this day. However, Dimitris Christopoulos (2019) makes it clear that although irredentism is not absent, it is only a marginal issue today, and he comments that it is much easier to find Macedonian irredentism in Melbourne or Toronto than in Skopje itself. The Greek way of thinking is that after the Second World War, Tito succeeded in manufacturing the Macedonian people and later employed this against Greece for his own political purposes and strategic gains (Pendarovski, 2011, p. 13). In spite of this, the Macedonian nation cannot be seen as a Titoist creation, as any reading of the last decade of nineteenth-century Macedonian history will clearly demonstrate, if one looks at the activities of the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organisation (IMRO) or the Ilinden Uprising of 1903. Although, as Barbara Jelavich (1983) has pointed out, the Macedonian national awakening came later than that of the other Balkan states. Also, unlike Bosnia, Montenegro and Serbia, Macedonia remained under the tighter control of the Ottoman state for much longer, with a large Turkish presence, whilst Greek cultural pressure was also strong in Macedonia as the Orthodox Church had been placed under the jurisdiction of Constantinople in 1776 and Greek had become the language of church services, education and commerce even in the solidly Slavonic areas of Macedonia (Jelavich, 1983).6 Whilst the Republic of Macedonia remained a constituent, semiautonomous part of Yugoslavia, following the signing of ASNOM in the summer of 1944, this was less of a problem for Greek public opinion. But, once Macedonia gained independence in 1991, Greece feared that the Macedonian government and people would begin to make irredentist claims upon Greek Macedonia. In reality, during the latter part of the

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twentieth century until now, the name issue has been an issue of contested identities (Kofos, 2010), concerning the appropriation or misappropriation of history, culture and heritage, or what Zhidas Daskalovski has described as a ‘clash of historical narratives’.7 Furthermore, Christopoulos (2019) points out that, when its neighbour stopped calling itself the Socialist Republic of Macedonia, following independence, and dropped the ‘Socialist’ part of its appellation, referring to itself as the Republic of Macedonia, Greece suddenly responded in a negative way.8 Nevertheless, after Macedonian independence from Yugoslavia, Greece insisted on the appellation Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) as opposed to the constitutional name of Republic of Macedonia. Then Macedonia had to remove the 16 sun rays from its new national flag, the Star of Vergina, because this had once been the symbol of Philip of Macedon and Alexander the Great. There followed sanctions, as in February 1994 when a second unilateral trade embargo was placed at the Greek-Macedonian frontier for all goods except humanitarian aid and medicines. Then in 1998 and 1999, Greece yet again blocked Macedonian entry into the EU and NATO and again at the NATO Bucharest summit in 2008. The problem has continued until very recently and although Greece now trades with Macedonia, the blocking of EU/NATO entry remained one of the key issues affecting Macedonian stability and security and has impacted heavily upon Macedonia’s long transition. We return to this matter in the next section and the final section of this chapter. The wiretapping scandal of February 2015 ushered in over two years of political crisis which witnessed its lowest ebb in violent protest on 27 April 2017 (‘Bloody Thursday’—Krvav chetvrtok) when a 200-strong, nationalist, pro-Gruevski mob stormed the Macedonian Sobranie in reaction to the election of Talat Xhaferi, an ethnic Albanian, as speaker of the parliament. Several politicians were injured in the scuffles that ensued, including Zoran Zaev who sustained a head injury. Then, on 31 May 2017, Zaev’s government came to power and this brought with them a totally different approach to the name dispute and the Euro-Atlantic project by comparison with that of the previous government.9 There was new momentum to solving the name dispute that had kept Macedonia out of the EU and NATO and within a fortnight the new foreign minister Nikola Dimitrov flew to Athens on 14 June 2017 in a bid to seek a feasible solution with Nikos Kotzias, his Greek counterpart. The

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fact that Athens should be Dimitrov’s first visit was in itself deeply significant of the new mood swing in Skopje (Marusic, 2017). There was to be no more statue-building, or cultural borrowings from Greece’s classical past, with the renaming of roads and sports halls as had been happening since 2010 as part of Gruevski’s Skopje 2014 project. Indeed, there was to be no more antagonism of Greece under the SDSM-DUI government which appeared to be prepared to go the extra mile in appeasing the Greek government. A year later, Alexander the Great Airport had been renamed as Skopje International Airport,10 whilst the Alexander ‘The Great’ highway, leading from the capital to the border with Greece, had been renamed the Highway of Friendship, and there was even talk of removing the Statue of the Warrior on Horseback from Macedonia Square in the heart of the city, leading towards the Stone Bridge. Although there were also rumours that a watch was being kept on the square by vigilantes, in case an attempt should be made to remove it, and for over a year, there had been a protest in front of the parliament building with demonstrators camping out in the Park of the Woman Warrior, opposite the Macedonian Sobranie, asking passers-by to sign a petition to keep Macedonia’s constitutional name and resist bowing down any further to Greece’s continued demands that the country be renamed. For this was the sticking point, one year on and the name dispute with Greece had proven to be an unsurmountable obstacle whilst the Greek government was insisting on a new name. It certainly looked as though there would be more trouble ahead and domestically there were concerns that the Macedonian public felt let down after all the promises made the previous summer by the Zaev government that the naming dispute would be swiftly resolved. There were also strong rumours in Skopje that the Russians, as members of the UN Security Council, would block the agreement with Greece as the whole process was being negotiated under the auspices of the UN. Of course, the agreement between Macedonia and Greece was a precondition of NATO membership, but the spin at the time was that if Russia were to block the agreement in the UN, Macedonia would not be admitted into NATO. This tied in with widespread perceptions of growing Russian interference in the western Balkans over the past couple of years.11 For the Macedonian government, given the allegations of Russian interference in the Western Balkans, it became ever more important that Macedonia should enter the EU and NATO. Furthermore, the Euro-Atlantic project would bring greater stability to an ethnically fractious country.

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The crux of the matter was agreeing to a composite name for the country. As early as 2007, Greece had announced that it would give its consent to a composite name in which the word Macedonia could feature. In his presentation at the NATO Parliamentary Assembly’s Rose-Roth Seminar, held in Skopje in October 2010, Evangelos Kofos (2010) had considered the prospects for resolving the name issue and re-affirmed US mediator Nimetz’s proposal that the country should maintain its constitutional name (Macedonia) but with a prefix, suggesting the choice of: North, Gorna (Upper) or Vardarska (Vardar). The eventual choice would be North Macedonia, for at long last, on 17 June 2018, the Prespa Agreement was signed at Lake Prespa between the Macedonian foreign minister Nikola Dimitrov and the Greek foreign minister Nikos Kotzias. On 30 September 2018, a Consultative referendum was held on membership of the EU and NATO, and the acceptance of the name agreement between the Republic of Greece and the Republic of North Macedonia, as set out in the Prespa Agreement. This resulted in 94% voting in favour of the changes, but with only a 37% voter turnout, when a 50% threshold was required. The referendum had failed, and so the agreement had to be ratified by two-thirds (80 MPs) of the Sobranie. So, on 19 October 2018, 80 out of 120 MPs voted to start the process of renaming of the country. Constitutional changes for renaming of the country as the Republic of North Macedonia were passed by a two-thirds majority in the Sobranie on 11 January 2019, thereby completing the legal adoption of the Prespa Agreement. In the meantime, on 25 January 2019, the Prespa Agreement was ratified in the Greek parliament. Then, on 6 February 2019, the accession protocol with NATO was signed between the Republic of North Macedonia and the 29 NATO member countries, and on a visit to Skopje on 3 June 2019, Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg informed premier Zaev that NATO was ready to welcome North Macedonia into the family (NATO, 2020).

The Euro-Atlantic Project When writing about Macedonia’s foreign policy, Pendarovski (2011, p. 61) once commented on how the most workable way for small states such as Macedonia to avoid externally induced insecurity would be to integrate into international institutions which, he argued, have historically performed two important functions among many. Firstly, they could occasionally hold back powerful states by the set of common rules mandatory

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for all members; given that their internal distribution of power decreases potential conflict escalations, which is, in principle, beneficial for the security of small states. Secondly, Pendarovski (2011, pp. 61–62) argues that international institutions offer a formal position to the small states to articulate their views and veto or avoid decisions that they believe are detrimental to their national interests. This probably best explains why since independence it has been in Macedonia’s interest to seek membership of two important international institutions, NATO and the EU, otherwise referred to as the Euro-Atlantic project. A slightly different interpretation is provided by Liotta and Jebb (2002, p. 61) who comment that the idea of a federalised Europe resonated with Macedonian citizens because they had been accustomed to a federalised system in Yugoslavia. The country’s desire to join NATO spanned almost three decades. On 23 November 1993, the Sobranie passed a decision to apply for full NATO membership. Then, on 11 November 1995, the country joined the Partnership for Peace (PfP), and four years later joined NATO’s MAP (Membership Action Plan) on 19 April 1999. MAP provided the framework through which the NATO allies could contribute advice, assistance, and practical support to countries, such as Macedonia, thereby helping the country to prepare for full NATO membership. As such this framework set out reform plans and timelines in the following key areas: military and security-sector reforms, efforts to meet democratic standards and ensure free and fair elections, support for reducing corruption and fighting organised crime, and judicial reform, whilst improving public administration and promoting good-neighbourly relations (NATO, 2020). In the aftermath of NATO’s conflict with the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, NATO had recognised the cooperation of Macedonia, which provided host nation support to the Kosovo Force (KFOR) and NATOled stabilisation operations in Kosovo in 1999, as well as logistical support for KFOR and humanitarian assistance to refugees who had fled Kosovo during the fighting (NATO, 2020). NATO also recognised the contributions Macedonia made to ISAF (the International Security Assistance Force) in Afghanistan in 2002 and 2005 as well as the country’s contribution to the Partnership Action Plan on Terrorism by sharing intelligence and analysis with NATO. At the Bucharest Summit in April 2008, the NATO allies agreed to extending an invitation to ‘the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia’ (FYROM) to join NATO in recognition of the country’s ‘hard work and commitment’. The only sticking point was the proviso: ‘…as soon as a mutually acceptable solution to the issue over

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the country’s name be reached with Greece’ (NATO, 2020). As things transpired, it would take a further 12 years for the country to become NATO’s thirtieth member state. If joining NATO was seen as being crucial to Macedonia’s security, then European integration was essential in order to build up the country’s economic performance and prosperity, whilst strengthening Macedonia’s road towards greater democracy and transparency. This would be achieved by the Republic fulfilling the criteria of the five core values of Normative Power in Europe (NPE). These are: peace, liberty, democracy, rule of law and the respect for human rights, to which may be added four subsidiary values: social solidarity, anti-discrimination, sustainable development and good governance (Manners, 2002). Macedonia was admitted as an ‘associate member’ of the EU on 9 April 2001, after signing up to the Stabilisation Association Process in Luxembourg. Yet, Macedonia would be blocked from both NATO and the EU by Greece, in spite of all its efforts to engage with the requirements of the admission criteria. This ignored the fact that Macedonia had allowed NATO troops into Macedonia in 1999; that the implementation of the Ohrid Framework Agreement since 2001 had been relatively successful and that Macedonia had complied with many EU membership entrance requirements; as well as growing democratisation in the country, such as banking legislation, compliance with EU regulations on accountancy, and the country’s improved human rights record, recognition of Kosovo, and improved regional cooperation. However, despite some notable improvements, even ten years after the Ohrid Framework Agreement, Macedonia continued to be a flawed democracy as evidenced by the existence of party patronage in the public sector and the use of government resources to exert influence over the media (Bieber, 2011).

Illegal Wiretapping and the Colourful Revolution This situation would be exacerbated by the wiretapping scandal, in February 2015 in which opposition leader Zoran Zaev started publishing wiretapped materials which indicated the illegal activities of top officials in the VMRO-DPMNE party, in particular Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski (Bakrevska-Dodovska, 2017, p. 41). Between 2 June and 15 July 2015, the EU intervened by mediating the Przhino Agreement with the Macedonian government and the main political parties in the Republic, in a

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bid to end the political and institutional crisis that had arisen in the first half of 2015. This agreement called for the participation of the SDSM opposition party in the Macedonian ministries. Przhino also called for the early resignation of Prime Minister Gruevski as well as a call for general elections to be held in June 2016. The VMRO-DPMNE government partially complied with these demands, and SDSM politicians began to participate in the ministries whilst Katica Janeva was appointed as Special Prosecutor, and she was mandated to investigate the criminal case indicated in the wiretapped materials. In the meantime, Gruevski resigned on 14 January 2016, and it was announced that general elections would be held in June. However, in April, President Ivanov pardoned 56 politicians involved in the wiretapping scandal. This prompted widespread condemnation and ongoing massive protests, so later on he had to revoke his amnesty decision (DW, 2016). The upshot of all this was that Macedonia had not fulfilled the requirements of Przhino, which would raise concerns in the EU of non-compliance in the process of democratisation, thereby leading to even further delays in EU entry. The US view similarly reflected that Macedonia was not fulfilling all EU and NATO values and that failure to comply with Przhino was undermining the integrity of the country’s judiciary system as well as undermining Macedonia’s rule of law. There had also been warnings from the UK’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) in April with the comment from David Lidington (2016), UK’s Minister for Europe, that: ‘These [wiretapping] allegations must be fully investigated according to due legal process, so Macedonia can find a sustainable resolution to the ongoing political crisis. I urge the President of Macedonia to find a way to reverse the decision’. The FCO had also expressed concerns at the time over the lack of preparedness for the June elections and a lack of clarity on the Voters’ List and a lack of media reform alongside reports of intimidation. Furthermore, Teuta Arifi, Vice President of the DUI (Democratic Union for Integration),12 commented that: ‘Macedonia risks further isolation from European processes as well as internal destabilisation that can run along different lines, both inter-ethnic and inter-religious as well’ [sic] (Mejdini, 2016). Over the summer of 2016, demonstrators gathered at about 6 p.m. each evening, pelting and shooting multi-coloured paintballs or using spray cans against the Skopje 2014 monuments, buildings and sculptures. So, for example, the Gate of Macedonia (the triumphal arch) and the monument to the fallen heroes were covered in a variety of colours, and

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the Warrior on Horseback had soap-powder and red dye poured into the fountain.13 Some sources blamed the external machinations of the governments of Macedonia’s neighbouring states: Bulgaria, Greece, Albania, Kosovo and Serbia, arguing that Zaev was a total pragmatist, prepared to do anything to get into power, even if that meant doing deals with the intelligence services of external powers. This all fitted in with the widening of internal dissent in Macedonia in what was becoming a most-challenging year in the country’s twenty-five years of independence.14 The Russian Internet site Sputnik blamed everything on Western interference, naming the CIA, the OSCE, the UK government and above all George Soros (presumably for supporting Zoran Zaev).

Corruption, Backsliding and State Capture After ten years of coalition rule led by the right-wing VMRO-DPMNE under Nikola Gruevski, the SDSM formed a new coalition government in February 2017 under Zoran Zaev. The latter half of Gruevski’s government had been characterised by a widespread abuse of power, with massive infringements on the right to private communications and a lack of control over the state intelligence and security services. The problem was that the Gruevski government had been hugely implicated in state capture and widespread corruption and clientelism, which entailed material benefits to citizens in return for electoral support. This also included politically connected businesses and employment in public administration based on connections and political affiliation as well as the politicisation of ethnicity. This was all pointed out by Reinhard Priebe’s report to the European Commission in June 2015. Priebe’s team had arrived in Macedonia in the middle of the political chaos of the wiretapping scandal and the Colourful Revolution and his report provided the EU with an assessment of the situation confronting Macedonia and a set of recommendations on the urgent priorities needing reform, especially with regard to corruption in the judiciary, media clientelism and the politicisation of the country’s administrations. What Priebe’s report revealed was the backsliding of the rule of law and state capture, which may be defined as systematic political corruption whereby politicians exploit their control over the country’s decision-making processes for their own political benefit. Clearly, there was no place for existence of state capture and corruption in a county aspiring for membership of the European Union.

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Hence, building upon Priebe’s findings, the new government set about trying to win public confidence and trust by freeing the captured institutions and bringing the country back onto the Euro-Atlantic path. This meant confronting state capture through increased transparency and the strengthening of accountability structures which were key to Macedonia’s EU integration process. In the meantime, in May 2018, Gruevski was sentenced to two-year imprisonment on corruption charges, and in November he fled to Hungary where he was granted political asylum. Once in power, the Zaev-led coalition government made some progress in depoliticising the public institution and the fight against corruption, and this has continued under the Dimitar Kovachevski administration which succeeded Zaev at the end of December 2021. Whilst challenges remain, one can no longer speak of a situation of state capture in North Macedonia today (Lemstra, 2020). But sadly, although the Euro-Atlantic project has partly been achieved through the country’s membership of NATO on 27 March 2020, the start of accession talks to the EU continue to be blocked by Bulgaria at the time of writing.

Relations Between Macedonia and Russia Russia sees NATO enlargement in the Balkans as a provocation. From a Russian perspective, this was compounded by the fact that since the declaration of Macedonian independence, the United States had been robustly involved in Macedonia, assisting the state-building efforts of the country as it proceeded along its path to NATO and EU membership, which as we have seen above, had become Macedonia’s key foreign policy priority (Bakrevska-Dodovska, 2017). The United States had also played a major role in the process of negotiating and implementing the Ohrid Framework Agreement in and after 2001 as well as playing a major role in helping to resolve internal political crises, such as the wiretapping scandal. In response to this, the Russians accused the Americans of trying to overthrow an elected government and of orchestrating yet another ‘colour revolution’, not unlike earlier examples in Ukraine (2004, 2014), Georgia (2008) and even those earlier demonstrations for independence in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania (the Baltic Way) in the spring of 1990. Yet, although the United States had always been supportive of the new Macedonian state, it had delayed recognising the country’s constitutional

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name until 2004 and was unable to stop Greece from vetoing Macedonia’s bid to join NATO at the Bucharest summit in April 2008 as well as blocking Macedonia’s negotiations for EU membership. Russia has had historical interests in the Balkans since the origins of the Eastern question and its growing rivalry with the Ottoman Empire in the mid-eighteenth century. More direct intervention came during the nineteenth century, especially with regard to the events of 1878 and Bulgaria, with the Treaty of San Stefano, and the role of the ‘Tsar Liberator’ Alexander II. Apart from Russia’s strategic and military interests in the region, Orthodoxy and Pan-Slavism would also wield a particularly important role. In the nineteenth century, Russia would support the idea of a Greater Serbia or a Greater Bulgaria, yet it had no specific strategic interest in Macedonian separateness. The key goal for Russia was access to the Mediterranean from the Black Sea, via the Bosphorus, the Sea of Marmara and the Dardanelles. The region would play a pivotal role in Russian, then Soviet strategic policy during both the First and Second World Wars. Witness, especially Stalin’s fear of encirclement, and Soviet relations with Southeast European states throughout the Cold War. But, with the break-up of the Soviet Union and throughout the Yeltsin years (1991–1999), Russia was too preoccupied with its own problems and the loss of superpower status to be overly concerned with developments in Eastern and South-Eastern Europe, with the exception of Russian troops acting with NATO troops in the Yugoslav successor states after the signing of the Dayton Agreement in 1995 and the rush for Prishtina airport in 1999. The change in Russian foreign policy attitudes would come later in the Putin years, particularly following Kosovo’s independence in February 2008, because of the potential of its ripple effects among the sub-state nationalisms in the Russian Federation. This was bolstered by the UN/EU position on Abkhazia and South Ossetia in the summer of 2008, in the wake of the Russian invasion of Georgia, running parallel with growing Russian concerns about NATO’s eastward expansion. It is from this time that Russia’s influence operation in the Western Balkans began leading to a feeling among some commentators, such as Edward Lucas (2014) that there has been a ‘return to the Cold War’, although others, including this author, interpret this more as the ending of the end of the Cold War (Hudson, 2015, 2017). Clearly, Putin’s rise to power and his mission to make Russia a great player on the world stage has had a much greater impact in the Western Balkans. According to leaked classified documents, the Kremlin’s goal is to stop countries in

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the Western Balkans joining NATO and counter western influence in the region (Harding et al., 2017). There are economic implications of Russian leverage as well. Macedonia is not resource rich and is dependent upon Russian gas and any potential revenues from Russian gas pipelines. Developments since 2015 have been the Energy issue and South Stream, and especially the undersea pipeline from Turkey that has replaced ‘South Stream’ and the construction of the Negotino–Klechovce gas pipeline running South to North across Macedonia. Since 2015, there has been a growth in trade with Russia, to say nothing of the role of Russian soft power politics with regard to the Russian Orthodox Church mediating between the Serbian Orthodox Church and the Macedonian Orthodox Church. This is posited on the sentiment of ‘pan-Slavic’ identity and shared Orthodox Christianity, allied to the sponsoring of the construction of Orthodox crosses and churches across the country (Harding et al., 2017). In addition to this, Russia encouraged Russian language and literary studies in the Macedonian education system, with the creation of nearly 30 Macedonian-Russian friendship associations. Hand-in-hand with this were the growing diplomatic relations in 2016, with the setting up of a Russian consulate in Bitola and the appointment of the Rector of Sts. Cyril and Methodius University as the Russian honorary consul (Bakrevska-Dodovska, 2017). There is evidence too, of Russian interference over internal issues, such as Sergei Lavrov accusing the West of trying to incite an overthrow of the Macedonian government with regard to the inter-ethnic clashes in Kumanovo in May 2015.15 By contrast, there were the aforementioned Russian accusations of Western involvement in the telephone tapping affair of 2015 and the ensuing Colourful Revolution. But the really big issue has been Russia’s push for neutrality in the Balkans. This ties in perfectly with Russian concerns over NATO expansion and enlargement, the EU Eastern Partnership project in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine (Giddens, 2014; Hudson, 2015). As Lucas (2014, pp. xiv, xv) put it, ‘The Eastern Partnership had achieved the worst of both worlds. It was provocative in Russian eyes, yet vulnerable to pressure’ adding that, ‘Russia fears the West’s soft power, but not its will power’!16 With regard to NATO, the Kremlin experienced setbacks, especially in April 2017 when Montenegro’s parliament voted to become a member of the alliance (Harding et al., 2017),

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thereby blocking Russia’s last potential overland corridor of access to the Adriatic Sea. Meanwhile, from a Macedonian perspective, a survey commissioned by the International Republican Institute in April 2016 showed that support for Macedonia’s membership of NATO had dropped from 92% in 2008 to 71% in April 2016. Furthermore, when asked which country helps Macedonia’s national interest the most, 22% of respondents in the poll mentioned the EU, whilst the United States received only 10% which was only one per cent short of Russia’s score (IRI, 2016 cited in BakrevskaDodovska, 2017, p. 57).

Conclusion Following the Prespa Agreement, representatives of the NATO member states signed a protocol for the accession of North Macedonia to NATO on 6 February 2019 and over the following year all 29 NATO member states ratified this protocol, so that the accession protocol entered into force on 19 March 2020. As a result, 27 years after Macedonia had first expressed its desire to join NATO, on 27 March 2020, North Macedonia became the thirtieth member state. An almost three-decade-long ambition had finally become a reality. Meanwhile, on 18 October 2019, the EC Council had taken the decision not to give a date for the start of accession negotiations for the Republic of North Macedonia to enter the EU, thereby causing yet further delays in the EU integration process. Then, on 24 March 2020, after so many delays, ministers for European affairs gave their political agreement to the opening of EU accession talks with North Macedonia. So, where does this leave North Macedonia today? The country has finally joined NATO but remains in the waiting room of the EU. It is halfway towards full recognition as a member of two of the most important elite clubs in the international political arena today. Judging on past experience of all the fourteen former socialist states which have been integrated into NATO since the end of the Cold War, only Albania, Montenegro and North Macedonia, all former socialist states and members of NATO have as yet to be incorporated as members of the European Union.17 Joining NATO is the first big step towards joining the EU. The incorporation of North Macedonia into NATO has established greater stability in the Western Balkans, so that having once been a major problem for the region, North Macedonia has in effect become

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the solution (IFIMES, 2018). So much has been promised by the West and North Macedonia has complied more than any other country with Western demands. Yet the country still remains outside the EU, and it would appear that having finally resolved the name dispute with Greece the road forward to EU integration is being blocked yet again, this time by Bulgaria (Bojadzievski, 2021). If entry into NATO means that the country’s security, territorial integrity and welfare have been assured,18 entry into the EU will help create the conditions for North Macedonia’s general prosperity. It would seem as though, at long last North Macedonia is finally emerging from its transition.

Notes 1. There had also been an attack from an RPG rocket launcher on the Macedonian Government building in October 2014. 2. Later to be referred to as the FRY, the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. 3. The official turnout for the Referendum was 75.74% of the registered voters. See also Dimitrijevii´c (2012, p. 15). 4. For example, in September 2014, Nezvat Halili, former leader of the now defunct PDP (Party for Democratic Prosperity), made a speech in Skopje, declaring an Albanian republic in Macedonia, calling it IliridaMacedonia or Ilirida-FYROM (according to differing sensibilities over the naming dispute), advocating partition and the creation of a confederal state between Macedonians and Albanians (Marusic, 2014). 5. Some moving reflections on this may be found in Kassabova (2020). 6. In 1776 the Ottoman authorities placed the Greek patriarch in Constantinople in charge of the Macedonian Church and abolished the archbishopric of Ohrid. Rossos (2008, p. 45) comments on how the Greek-dominated patriarchate had exclusive control over education, cultural and intellectual life in Macedonia as a whole. 7. With a nice pun on Huntington’s (1998) ‘clash of civilizations’, Daskalovski develops this theme further in the third chapter of this volume. 8. This was something that this author had also found puzzling at the beginning of the 1990s, when this whole issue flared up, as he was aware that the people of the Socialist Republic of Macedonia had been referred to as Macedonians long before 1991 and even before the signing of ASNOM. 9. This author well remembers the round table conversation in La Terrazza restaurant, just down from the Porta Macedonia, on 25 May 2017 with some of the newly elected politicians from the government that was about

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10.

11.

12.

13. 14. 15.

16. 17.

18.

to be formed with enthusiastic talk about the name dispute that would soon be resolved, with a forthcoming visit to Greece. Returning to Skopje a year later in May 2018, this author noted that the old sign had been removed, but not as yet replaced on the main airport building. On Monday 26 March 2018 the Macedonian government expelled a diplomat from the Russian consulate (in support of the UK’s actions over the Skripal poisoning in Salisbury). Russia responded strongly saying that Macedonia would have to meet the consequences. The following evening there was a 500 strong demonstration in front of the Russian consulate, denouncing the actions of the Macedonian government and calling for closer links with Russia and this went hand-in-hand with increasing public frustration over the Euro-Atlantic project. Founded after the Ohrid Agreement in 2001 and the ending of the 2001 conflict, the Democratic Union for Integration is the largest Albanian political party in Macedonia and third largest party in the country. Its president is Ali Ahmeti, the former leader of the Albanian NLA (National Liberation Army). See Chapter 11 in this volume, ‘The Dissonant Narratives of the Skopje 2014 Project’ by Loreta Georgievska-Jakovleva. See Chapter 8 in this volume, ‘Macedonia’s Euro-Atlantic Integration’ by Blerim Reka. Consider also the attempt on President Milo Ðukanovi´c in Montenegro in November 2016 and allegations of Russian FSB involvement and the involvement of the Serbian government, because of Ðukanovi´c’s bid to take Montenegro into NATO. Lucas (2014) op.cit., pp. xiv and xv. Accession dates to NATO of the post-Socialist states are as follows: Czechia, Hungary and Poland (12 March 1999); Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia (29 March 2004); Albania and Croatia (1 April 2009); Montenegro (5 June 2017); and North Macedonia (27 March 2020). According to the ‘All for one and one for all’ clause or Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty whereby: ‘…an armed attack against one or more of them [NATO member countries] shall be considered an attack against them all….’.

References Bakrevska-Dodovska, A. (2017). Between the eagle and the bear: US and Russian foreign policy towards the Republic of Macedonia, 1991–2016 (Unpublished MA thesis). University American College Skopje.

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Bieber, F. (2011). Assessing Ohrid Framework Agreement. In M. Risteska & Z. Daskalovski (Eds.), One decade after the Ohrid Framework Agreement: Lessons (to be) learned from the Macedonian experience (pp. 12–24). Friedrich Ebert Stiftung and the Center for Research and Policy Making. Bojadzievski, J. (2021, August 12). North Macedonia, Albania face new obstacles on path to EU . Voice of America. https://www.voanews.com/europe/northmacedonia-albania-face-new-obstacles-path-eu. Accessed 13 September 2021. Bulgarian Parliament. (2019, October 10). Declaration of the Forty-fourth National Assembly of the Republic of Bulgaria in connection with the enlargement of the European Union and the Stabilization and Association Process of the Republic of Northern Macedonia and the Republic of Albania. https://par liament.bg/en/declaration/ID/157188. Accessed 12 June 2020. Christopoulos, D. (2019, January 10). The Macedonian question and Greece’s national solitude. Open Democracy. https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/ can-europe-make-it/macedonian-question-and-greece. Accessed on 19 March 2019. Daskalovski, Z. (2008). The independence of Kosovo and the consolidation of Macedonia—A reason to worry? Journal of Contemporary European Studies, 16(2), 267–289. Dempsey, J. (2015, May 13). Judy asks: Is the EU sleeping on the Western Balkans. Carnegie Europe. https://carnegieeurope.eu/strategiceur ope/60069. Accessed on 19 March 2019. Dimitrijevii´c, V. (2012). Constitutional ethno-nationalism after fifteen years. In R. Hudson & G. Bowman (Eds.), After Yugoslavia: Identities and politics within the successor states (pp. 20–25). Palgrave. DW. (2016, June 6). Macedonia’s president Ivanov revokes all pardons in wiretap scandal. Deutsche Welle. https://www.dw.com/en/macedonias-presidentivanov-revokes-all-pardons-in-wiretap-scandal/a-19310761. Accessed 14 September 2016. Giddens, A. (2014). Turbulent and mighty continent: What future for Europe. Polity. Harding, L., Belford, A., & Cvetkovska, S. (2017, June 4). Russia actively stoking discord in Macedonia since 2008, intel files say. The Guardian. https:// www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jun/04/russia-actively-stoking-discordin-macedonia-since-2008-intel-files-say-leak-kremlin-balkan-nato-west-inf luence. Accessed 12 July 2022. Hudson, R. (2015). The end of the end of the Cold War: Current dilemmas confronting European security in the wake of the crisis in Ukraine. In I. Dodovski, S. Pendarovski, I. Petrovska, & R. Hudson (Eds.), European integration new prospects (pp. 55–80). University American College Skopje. Hudson, R. (2016). Current security implications in the Balkans, with a focus on Macedonia. In F. Jegede (Ed.), Diplomacy and the politics of fear: The

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21st century challenges to the theory and practice of diplomacy in international relations (pp. 62–64). University of Derby. Hudson, R. (2017). A clash of civilizations? Revisiting Russian identity politics at the ‘End of the End of the Cold War.’ In R. Hudson, I. Dodovski, & M. Andeva (Eds.), Rethinking migration, economic growth and solidarity (pp. 149–166). University American College Skopje. Huntington, S. (1998). The clash of civilizations and the remaking of the new world order. Touchstone. IFIMES. (2018, August 1). Macedonia to join NATO after a decade of isolation. https://www.ifimes.org/en/researches/macedonia-to-join-nato-after-adecade-of-isolation/4334?page=22. Accessed 12 July 2022. Jelavich, B. (1983). History of the Balkans: Eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (Vol. 1). Cambridge University Press. Kassabova, K. (2020). To the Lakes. Granta. Kofos, E. (2010, October 20). Prospects for resolving the name issue. NATO Parliamentary Assembly’s Rose-Roth Seminar, Skopje. https://www.eliamep. gr/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/E.KOFOS_.pdf. Accessed 13 July 2019. Lemstra, M. (2020, September). The destructive effects of state capture in the Western Balkans. Policy brief. https://www.clingendael.org/sites/def ault/files/2020-10/Policy_Brief_Undermining_EU_enlargement_2020.pdf. Accessed 12 July 2022. Lidington, D. (2016, April 14). Minister for Europe statement on recent developments in Macedonia. Press release. https://www.gov.uk/government/news/ minister-for-europe-statement-on-macedonian-president-ivanov. Accessed 14 September 2016. Liotta, P. H., & Jebb, C. R. (2002). Cry, the imagined country: Legitimacy and fate of Macedonia. European Security, 11(1), 49–80. Lucas, E. (2014). The New Cold War: Putin’s Threat to Russia and the West. Bloomsbury. Manners, I. (2002). Normative Power Europe, a contradiction in terms? Journal of Common Market Studies, 40, 235–258. Marusic, S. J. (2014, September 19). Albanians declare ‘Republic’ in Macedonia. Balkan Insight. https://balkaninsight.com/2014/09/19/republic-of-iliridadeclared-in-macedonia/. Accessed 11 July 2020. Marusic, S. J. (2017, June 14). Macedonia FM receives warm welcome in Athens. Balkan Insight. https://balkaninsight.com/2017/06/14/macedonia-fm-rec ieves-warm-welcome-in-athens-06-14-2017/. Accessed 15 June 2017. Mejdini, F. (2016, May 19). Macedonia risks isolation, Albanian party leader fears. Balkan Insight. https://balkaninsight.com/2016/05/16/dui-con siders-eu-agreement-for-macedonia-endangered-and-country-at-risk-05-152016/. Accessed 21 September 2016.

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NATO. (2020, September 17). Relations with the Republic of North Macedonia. https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/topics_48830.htm. Accessed 12 July 2022. Pendarovski, S. (2011). Macedonian Foreign Policy, 1991–2011: Aspects of internal and international legitimacy. Magor and University American College Skopje. Phillips, J. (2004). Macedonia: warlords and rebels in the Balkans. I.B. Tauris. Prespa Agreement. (2018, June 17). UNTC No. 55707 . https://treaties.un. org/doc/Publication/UNTS/No%20Volume/55707/Part/I-55707-080 0000280544ac1.pdf. Accessed 14 July 2020. Radio Free Europe. (2019, January 15). Macedonia’s Albanian-Language Bill becomes law. https://www.rferl.org/a/macedonia-s-albanian-languagebill-becomes-law/29711502.html. Accessed 11 July 2020. Rossos, A. (2008). Macedonia and the Macedonian: A history. Hoover Institution Press. State Statistical Office. (2021, March 30). Census of population, households and dwellings in the Republic of North Macedonia, 2021—First data set. www.stat. gov.mk/PrikaziSoopstenie_en.aspx?rbrtxt=146. Accessed 25 July 2022. Stevkovski, L. (2014). The European financial crisis, youth unemployment and the rise of right-wing extremism. In I. Dodovski, R. Hudson, M. Stefanovska, & S. Pendarovski (Eds.), The Europe of tomorrow: Creative, digital, integrated (pp. 61–78). University American College. United Nations. (1999, March 16). UNPREDEP. https://peacekeeping.un. org/en/mission/past/unpred_b.htm#:~:text=UNPREDEP’s%20achievemen ts,its%20northern%20and%20western%20borders. Accessed 25 June 2020. World Bank. (2016). WDI 2016: World Development Indicators. http://dat abank.worldbank.org/data/reports.aspx?source=world-development-idicators. Accessed 21 August 2016.

CHAPTER 3

Macedonia’s Revolving Security Threats: Perpetual Instability on the Edge of Europe Stevo Pendarovski

Profiles of the security threats and challenges to Macedonia have evolved greatly over the years but have always been broadly settled along the two dichotomies: internal versus external threats and new versus old or traditional ones. Long after independence, insecurity imported from the north was exacerbated by the imposition of economic embargos in the south, and these had by far the strongest potential to destabilise the country. However, as the years went by, domestic challenges gradually took the lead. In the group of internal, long-standing threats, interethnic tensions stand as the most prominent ones, strongly connected to the internal dynamic, though not disconnected from the threat of regional encirclement. The newly emerging challenges (domestic, autocratic tendencies, radical Islam, and waves of refugees) could eventually provoke transitional security and political crisis, but they have no potential of putting the territorial integrity of the country in any danger.

S. Pendarovski (B) School of Political Sciences, University American College Skopje, Skopje, North Macedonia

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 R. Hudson and I. Dodovski (eds.), Macedonia’s Long Transition, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-20773-0_2

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This chapter analyses the security threats and challenges to Macedonia in a chronological order during the four distinctive post-communist periods delineated by the country’s independence in September 1991; enhanced international visibility and inclusion in most of the international organisations by 1995; the internal conflict in 2001 and the vetoed NATO candidacy in 2008. The role of the international community will be considered throughout this chapter due to its unavoidable imprint on virtually all milestones of recent regional and national history. With the passage of time, the once predominant influence of the international community over Macedonian politics has substantially deteriorated. Accordingly, it is safe to predict that whatever challenge might emerge in the future, domestic political forces will be more decisive than the influence of foreigners.

Structural Shortages of the New State (1991–1995) At the time of Yugoslavia’s downfall, Macedonia was rightly considered to be one of the weakest republics, in a security and strategic sense: ethnically and religiously heterogeneous almost on a par with Bosnia-Herzegovina and economically the poorest of all the Yugoslav republics when comparing basic economic indicators (Stiblar, 2013). An internal democratic deficit, generated by its communist past and complex interethnic structure augmented by the volatile regional surroundings, made Macedonia extremely fragile. This background, early on, strongly influenced the government in Skopje to look for membership of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, just like many other emerging democracies from the former communist east.1 International attention during the Yugoslav wars was mainly focused on the Serbo-Croatian security connection which possessed the biggest potential, by far, for regional spillover. An initial perception of Macedonia by foreigners was that it was an ‘oasis of peace’ in what appeared to be an unstable region. This view was based solely upon the fact that the country had broken away from Yugoslavia without any violence, unlike Slovenia, Croatia or Bosnia-Herzegovina. As international conflict prevention was failing sequentially from Slovenia down to Kosovo, the strategic value of Macedonia would increase. In the post-Second World War period, ethnic Albanians, the largest ethnic minority in the country (making 25.17% of the population according to the 2002 census), had been marginalised both politically and

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economically in Macedonia (ESI, 2002). This was a predominant feature in the communist era, as it had been in the first post-Yugoslav transitional decade. In the early post-independence years, the nation-building process was in full swing as a mere continuation of communism. In the state of affairs aptly described as ‘nationalising statehood’ (Brubaker, 1996), ethnic Macedonians were in charge in all layers of the power structure, even in the least important institutions. The frustrated ethnic Albanian community seriously challenged the power imbalance in the new Republic on several occasions. They boycotted the independence referendum in September 1991 and did not vote for the first democratic Constitution two months later. The constitutionally embedded powersharing mechanisms further alienated ethnic Albanians, which led them in 1992 to organise an illegal referendum on political autonomy followed by the establishing of a parallel education system. As the state security services responded routinely by force, interethnic security incidents became frequent, with several fatalities and the destruction of mutual trust as a consequence.2 The strongest external resistance to the modern Macedonian state came from Athens, which objected to its northern neighbour’s name and a national narrative allegedly borrowing elements of the Greek national myth.3 Some evidence has even emerged indicating that Greece in the 1990s had made plans for the destabilisation of its northern neighbour (Michas, 2002, pp. 42–57). In fact, from a security perspective, Macedonia has never posed a threat to Greece. To the contrary, Greece, in the context of the name dispute, has imperilled Macedonia’s security in two respects. First, the Greek economic and trade blockade in the early- to mid-1990s, by denying the land-locked country access to the Greek port of Thessaloniki, thereby placing Macedonia under severe economic stress: the simultaneous UN embargo on Serbia effectively blocked Macedonian trade in the north and so amplified the economic damage (Shea, 1997, p. 208). Second, the name dispute has perpetuated Macedonia’s inability to firmly establish its external identity, which has long been challenged by its neighbours.4 Despite its internal, international and legal specifics, the societal security dimension5 of the name dispute remained fundamental for ethnic Macedonians. Macedonia’s delayed UN membership in April 1993 was overburdened by legal and political controversies since it is the only country in the organisation’s history which has been admitted under the temporary reference of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM).

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The political opposition in Skopje immediately labelled the government as being a ‘traitor’ of the national interest. Be that as it may be, no alternative strategy for advancing to UN membership under the country’s constitutional name as the Republic of Macedonia, or of staying secure outside the world organisation, had been offered. It is safe to say that for the meantime UN membership helped the country to survive, as the ‘temporary reference’ has not harmed the vital identity components of the Macedonian people. The official foreign-policy doctrine of the Macedonian Government towards its neighbours in the early 1990s was labelled ‘equidistance’. The inner logic of the idea was based upon concerns over the allegedly still vibrant irredentist claims on Macedonian territory, coming from its four neighbours.6 Guardians of the concept have explained its logic for Macedonian viability along the two main arguments: sound interethnic relations as an internal pillar of stability and the Euro-Atlantic anchor as the external one. Both components, allegedly, would have been irreparably harmed if some of the direct neighbours had been prioritised in the 1990s. In practice, by applying what was in essence a static foreign-policy concept, Macedonia distanced itself from the region whilst exaggerating any potential external threats. Serbia was overwhelmed by the wars in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina; Bulgaria and Albania were embraced by the turmoil of transition, and it was certainly beyond the bounds of reality that a NATO member—Greece would occupy its neighbour on its own. The international community, most notably the United States, had been closely monitoring the violent beak up of Yugoslavia and arrived early diplomatically in the Balkans (Paquin, 2008). A brief glance over the mandate of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), the first international organisation to deploy to Macedonia, is sufficient to comprehend the scope and resilience of the security challenges confronting the country. Established in 1992 and still operational, the Spillover Monitoring Mission in Skopje is the longest serving security field mission in OSCE history. Nowadays, the organisation has a different and more diversified agenda, but initially it was tasked with preventing a conflict spillover from the rump Yugoslav state, the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. A similar security rationale lay behind the United Nation’s resolution, in early 1992, to incorporate Macedonia into the United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR). Facing obstruction in becoming a fully

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fledged member of international organisations, as an ultimate precondition for stability, the Macedonian leadership formally requested international security protection from the UN Secretary-General. The decision by the administration in Washington to contribute 300 troops to the UN mission was especially indicative because the United States dispatched soldiers to protect the territory of the state which at that particular moment in time the United States did not recognise (Paquin, 2008, p. 447). During the Security Council session, the UN special envoy, Cyrus Vance, for the first time turned the attention of the organisation towards the broader regional context and the security nexus between Macedonia and Kosovo. With the very porous common border between Kosovo and Macedonia, and with ethnic Albanians comprising a quarter of the Macedonian population that security interdependence would be permanently alive over the next three decades. Early in 1993, the first ever UN preventive mission in history was deployed to Macedonia (Sokalsky, 2003). Brief and determined mediation by the US special envoy Richard Holbrooke pressed Skopje and Athens to sign an Interim Accord in September 1995, by which Macedonia closed its first major postindependence chapter. Reaching an agreement was a precondition for Greece to lift its trade embargo to Macedonia. The document nominally dealt with a wide range of topics, from human and cultural rights to economic, commercial, environmental and legal issues. However, the fundamental aspects of the Interim Accord went to the core of Greece’s security concerns, at least as far as Athens understood them. The two parties confirmed the existing common frontier as an enduring international border and recalled their obligation not to intervene under any pretext and in any form in the internal affairs of the other.7 On 3 October 1995 in downtown Skopje, an assassination attempt almost killed the Macedonian President Kiro Gligorov. The perpetrators and their motives are still unknown, but, amidst a wide array of speculations the most prominent one was that their goal was to alter the Western orientation of the country. Nevertheless, even though the most influential political figure in the country was practically incapacitated, the Macedonian Parliament ratified an Interim Accord with Greece as a precondition for emerging from international isolation. Shortly after the ratification, the country joined many international organisations, most notable among them, the Council of Europe and the OSCE.

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Generally speaking, in the first post-independence stage, the foreign policy crafted by the state leadership was focused on Washington DC. Due to Greece’s EU membership, the Macedonian president and government have regularly doubted Brussels’ impartiality and overwhelmingly put their trust in American diplomacy to guarantee the survival and prosperity of the Macedonian state.

Regional Security Calculations in Retreat (1995–2001) Two remarkable processes which would bring about positive implications to the broader region were completed in 1995: Croatia had reintegrated its previously occupied territories, and Bosnia-Herzegovina’s war ended with the Dayton Agreement which would successfully contain security challenges in the Belgrade–Zagreb–Sarajevo triangle. Building upon these positive regional tendencies, the NATO Alliance offered Partnership for Peace (PfP) to the Balkan countries—its specially tailored programme for the post-communist democracies. This platform helped to fundamentally transform the ‘people’s armies’ into professional formations, and by so doing, expanded the zones of democratic order and stability. By actively participating in the activities within the PfP since the early stages of the project, Macedonia had actually commenced preparations for submitting its NATO membership application which formally materialised several years later. In 1995, the UN Security Council restructured UNPROFOR into three formally separate, but interlinked peacekeeping operations. The new mission in Macedonia, now rebranded as the United Nations Preventive Deployment Force (UNPREDEP), was headquartered in Skopje, though the core of its mandate remained the same as the original UNPROFOR mission: to monitor and report on developments in the border areas with the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY) and Albania that could undermine Macedonia’s stability. A year later, UNPREDEP was completely separated from UNPROFOR, but maintained the same mandate and composition of troops of approximately 1,100 soldiers, primarily from Scandinavian countries and the United States. Five years into its first decade as an independent state, the Republic of Macedonia was still waiting to establish diplomatic relations with the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY) and the demarcation of the joint

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border. For the entire period between 1991 and 1996, the Serbian political elite had treated the common border as an administrative, rather than an inter-state one, in the hope that Macedonia would eventually join the minuscule Yugoslavia, although this would never happen. In the aftermath of the Dayton Agreement, in an attempt to appear as a constructive partner of the West, the then Yugoslav President Miloševi´c gave his final approval to the bilateral agreement for mutual diplomatic recognition. Thus, his country became the last among the former Yugoslav republics to recognise the political reality to the south of the FRY. Nevertheless, it was only a symbolic political move, since no bilateral agreement on the border demarcation followed. The UNPREDEP mission was suddenly interrupted in 1999, when China vetoed an extension of its mandate for an additional six months, as proposed by the UN Secretary-General. According to the Chinese delegate, the situation in the country and the region had sufficiently improved and an open-ended UN peacekeeping operation was no longer necessary. The publicly stated arguments of China were not supported by the facts on the ground, and the real motive was never spelled out. Beijing was angered by Macedonia’s decision to establish diplomatic relations with Taiwan, in what constituted a direct blow to their ultimate national objective of a ‘one China’ policy. The real security situation was accurately described in the Secretary-General’s report, which clearly stated that peace and stability in Macedonia continued to depend largely on developments in other parts of the region, particularly in Kosovo (UNPREDEP, 1999). Apart from the dissolution of the former SFRY, war between NATO and the FRY over Kosovo in 1999 exerted the most profound influence over the geopolitical setting of the region. For a short period of time, the air campaign conducted by the NATO countries led to about 360,000 refugees crossing the border into Macedonia. This accounted for approximately 17% of the country’s population, to say nothing of the 19,000 foreign soldiers positioned near the border, waiting for an eventual ground assault. The unprecedented number of refugees heavily overburdened the already scarce social, health and educational capacities of the country. The very fact that virtually all of the refugees were ethnic Albanians raised interethnic tensions among ethnic Macedonians who feared permanent changes in the country’s ethnic structure. Only the brief duration of Western intervention contributed to decreasing these tensions.

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In the midst of the air campaign, at the NATO Summit in Washington in April 1999, Macedonia was formally accepted into the Alliance’s newly designed Membership Action Plan envisaged to annually evaluate the applications of the formal candidates. At that time, virtually nobody could have foreseen that Macedonia would remain in NATO’s waiting-room for more than two decades, holding the longest candidature for NATO membership in the Alliance’s history. At the start of the new millennium, two obstacles contributed to that end: internal conflict and the Greek veto.

Internal Conflict and Beyond (2001–2008) After the regime change in Yugoslavia, in October 2000, Belgrade and Skopje signed a bilateral border agreement which was non-applicable. In reality, two-thirds of that boundary went along the Macedonian-Kosovar border where Belgrade after the NATO intervention no longer had any effective power, whilst the Kosovar authorities were powerless due to the province’s status as a UN protectorate. However, the very act of signing the agreement between Yugoslavia and Macedonia, sidelining Kosovo was used as a casus belli by extremist Albanian armed groups in the region, mainly from Kosovo and South Serbia to initiate armed conflict in Macedonia. At the same time, within Macedonia, the long-standing frustrations of ethnic Albanians over being excluded from power-sharing mechanisms on a local and national level were on the increase. In the period January-August 2001, the paramilitary structure called the National Liberation Army (NLA) claimed responsibility for a series of armed attacks against the Macedonian military and police. In its first statements, the NLA asked for Macedonian forces to withdraw from ‘our territories’, but, later on, their rhetoric shifted from territorial demands to an internationally more acceptable human rights agenda (Rozen, 2001). In the course of the conflict, several hundred people on both sides were killed, and tens of thousands were internally displaced (Phillips, 2004). Considering the parameters for instability, the Macedonian state was de-legitimated in several regions. With an inability to control the state borders, many people were forced to leave their homes, whilst in 2001, Macedonia was teetering on the brink between being a weak and a failed state (for a blurring line between them, see Butt & Lynch, 2004). The Framework Agreement8 which ended the war was brokered by the special envoys of the United States and the EU and, beyond doubt,

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presented the best possible solution to the given political, security and regional contexts. A compelling proof of this is that even its harshest critics have not been able to offer a viable alternative to its mainstream logic. The document has sealed the compromise of Macedonians and Albanians to have a stake in the common future of the country through power-sharing mechanisms. An integral part of the agreement was the comprehensive amnesty for fighters on both sides, except in the case of war crimes. It provided the legal standing for the entire leadership of the NLA to enter politics and the institutions they had been fighting against only a few months previously.9 In the post-2001 period, state-building processes were led by international organisations with domestic institutions serving in the role of formal enforcers. In the long run that produced the consequences of an addiction to foreign support and, as a result of this, a lack of local ownership of the post-crisis management dynamic. There was an additional challenge within the interethnic divide: the whole venture appeared to be fully legitimate to ethnic Albanians but seemed to be less so among ethnic Macedonians who questioned the impartiality of foreign mediators. The OSCE’s mandate in 2001 was expanded to monitoring and reporting on security incidents in the country; providing assistance to the authorities with confidence-building measures; and the reconciliation of ethnic communities. Nevertheless, the most complex mission from a security standpoint was assigned to the NATO Alliance: to collect and destroy those weapons that were illegally possessed by the NLA.10 After the first NATO mission, two more missions followed until December 2003 when the first ever EU military mission in history Concordia took over. The EU officials unanimously declared their mission to be a success, but the real driving force was the existence of strong US and NATO military, logistical and intelligence support and a more relaxed security environment compared to the situation that had existed a year and a half previously. During the 2002 NATO Summit in Prague, a major trilateral initiative between Macedonia, Albania and Croatia was announced. Endorsed by the United States, the initiative was transformed, one year later into the Adriatic Charter and included both political and security components. The United States declared its permanent interest in the independence, integrity and security of Macedonia (and Albania and Croatia) and stated its readiness for joint security consultations in times of crisis. The prime

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American goal was to push the three countries into closer security cooperation and so reinforce cohesion in those parts of the Balkans which were not formally part of the Alliance.11 The country, still in recovering mode, was faced with a considerable security challenge in November 2004 when the Referendum on decentralisation was provoked by a handful of leftist populists and the main right-wing opposition party. Their goal was to undermine the devolution of power to the municipalities with the ethnic Albanian majority, as one of the pillars of the Framework Agreement (Judah, 2004). Rumours about armed groups allegedly near the border with Kosovo appeared in the media. A former Albanian guerrilla leader threatened a new war if the referendum were to be successful, whilst the international community remained firm in its resolve that with a positive outcome in the referendum, the Euro-Atlantic aspirations of Macedonia would come to a standstill (Radio Free Europe, 2004). In the end, the referendum failed by a large margin, but the whole situation indicated that both country and society were far from consolidated. Over time, a certain level of political awareness among the elites has been reached over the necessity for balanced, interethnic co-habitation as a precondition for the survival of the state. In the years to come, internally induced interethnic crises may be possible, but any profound destabilisation could not happen without some external stimulus.

The NATO Summit in 2008: A Critical Milestone The calculations of the United States, with regard to Macedonia came into play during the NATO Summit, held in Bucharest in 2008, where the United States pressed for Macedonia’s entry into the Alliance. Washington’s strategic analyses were tied to the need for stability in South Eastern Europe, but failed, due to Greek resistance (Cornwell, 2008). In a calculated move aimed at calming down the domestic electorate, in the post-Bucharest period, Macedonia proposed forging strategic partnerships with the United States and Turkey (Voice of America, 2009). Both documents used diplomatic wording already applied in the bilateral acts which had been signed previously with these two states. Apparently, the principal objective of the Western allies was to send a message that the failed NATO candidate should not be internationally isolated. The Bucharest Summit created a new political reality and altered the strategic

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environment surrounding Macedonia. The Alliance’s veto to the Macedonian bid for membership appeared to be insurmountable, but, fortunately, the state was almost encircled by NATO countries which would have a relaxing effect on the internal stability of Macedonia. The long process of the dissolution of the ‘former’ Yugoslavia was concluded in Kosovo with its Declaration of Independence in February 2008. Skopje established full diplomatic relations with Pristina a year later, waiting for the demarcation of the common border to be finalised.12 Macedonia’s specific multi-ethnic structure dictated completely different responses to the potential outcomes during the Western-led negotiations. Ethnic Macedonians were suspicious that the independence of Kosovo would bolster the separatist tendencies of ethnic Albanians in Macedonia; the latter were uncompromising in their support for outright independence. But, realistically, the most threatening result for Macedonia from these negotiations would have been the partitioning of Kosovo along ethnic lines. All fears were dispelled by the Contact Group document that aimed to resolve the status of Kosovo, which was resolute in avoiding any domino effects in the wider region. To that end, the unification of Kosovo with any country or part of a country from the region had been removed from the negotiation table (Contact Group for Kosovo, 2005).

Newly-Emerging Challenges Political Islam in the Secular Region In the former Yugoslavia, Muslims were known for their moderate religious practices and support for interfaith co-habitation in what was officially an atheist country. The ensuing shift of ideological paradigms has not substantially influenced their stature and their way of communication with non-Muslims. Today, in Macedonia, the situation remains the same.13 Mosques have been built with money donated from Saudi Arabia in both the communist period and after; dozens of individuals have graduated from Arab religious schools and universities, but over the past quarter of a century imported strands of political Islam failed to gain any prominence. In 2006, public demonstrations over the cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad were organised in Skopje and Tetovo, but this was an externally induced activity for the global cause with an obvious lack of local motivation and ownership. In 2010, the Western media reported that four mosques in the capital had allegedly been taken over by radical Islamists

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(Marusic, 2010), but local analysts suggested that what was really at stake was the redistribution of incomes generated by the properties of the local Islamic community than the intrusion of any out-of-the-region religious practices. So-called political or radical Islam in the long run does not have the potential to disrupt Macedonian stability due to the lack of indigenous roots and long-standing secularism among regional and local Muslims. Individual violent acts inspired by radical Islam cannot be excluded, which means that the prospects for radical Islamic tendencies being massively supported by local Muslims are unlikely to materialise in the future. Macedonia and the Middle Eastern Refugees The Western Balkan refugee route was activated in 2012 when the EU Schengen visa restrictions were abolished for the five regional countries, but a huge influx of migrants and refugees was recorded in 2015 when the numbers of mostly Syrian refugees increased 16 times compared to those of 2014.14 As the waves of refugees rapidly approached the Balkan borders, old stereotypes of the regional people resurfaced depending on their ethnic and religious backgrounds. With regard to Macedonia, two specifics prevented the tensions from approaching a dangerous level: first, the general one, for refugees the Balkan Peninsula was only a transit area and second, the national one, valuable experience from 1999 when the country accommodated an even higher number of people on its territory for several months without any serious consequences. However, the negative fallout from the refugee crisis has been the reinforcement of an already modified political approach from Brussels which increasingly observes the Western Balkan countries from a security perspective rather than from an integrationist one (Matikj, 2016). The end result with the EU conditionally gone is democracy on the downturn, and autocratic rulers on the rise again throughout the region. Domestic Authoritarian Tendencies In the very turbulent first 15 years as an independent state, intraMacedonian disputes were completely sidelined by Macedonian/Albanian disagreements over the constitutional design of the state. Strong indices of authoritarian rule, outside the interethnic domain, appeared in the period 2010–2012 (Brunwasser, 2011), when Macedonia plummeted in

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the world charts for media freedom and the opposition was removed from the parliamentary session by force (Radio Free Europe, 2012). The latest stage of the protracted political crisis opened in 2015 with the publicly exposed wiretapping scandal on an unprecedented scale which confirmed that the government had developed a complex scheme to control the state institutions, business community, media and political opposition (Al Jazeera English, 2015). It is expected that the deep political divide in Macedonian society will endure even when the political stalemate has been formally resolved. An almost complete lack of trust and political dialogue between the government and the opposition is a very negative indicator for democracy in the country, its Euro-Atlantic ambitions and the perceptions of international investors. Anyhow, this does not have the potential to profoundly shatter the founding blocks of the state—its Constitution and its borders.

Conclusion For more than a decade and a half after the fall of communism, the United States and the European Union have managed the processes of the dissolution of the former Yugoslavia and have actively pushed for democratic reforms in the region. The strategic re-positioning of the United States towards Asia and internal infighting in Brussels have distanced both the United States and the EU from the Balkans and have opened the door for local leaderships. The end result of the long transition in the Balkans is the existence of three laggards which are discernible on the map: a nonfunctional Bosnia-Herzegovina, the internationally semi-recognised new state of Kosovo and Macedonia. Macedonia’s democracy, in the meantime, has not matured enough to be capable of carrying out the autonomous management of its internal political stalemates and security crises. Whilst in the past foreign assistance has been critical for the viability of the Macedonian state, its absence nowadays cannot engender the country’s territorial integrity and sovereignty. In such a case, only democracy would be a collateral damage. Domestically, the country remains divided along ethnic lines, but the overall challenges are more complex. Macedonia’s internal legitimacy depends upon the genuine implementation of three strategic projects: the Ohrid Framework Agreement; Euro-Atlantic integration; and last but not least in importance, liberal democracy which is intricately connected to the former two. For years, Euro-Atlantic integration has been stalled,

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whilst the Framework Agreement has not been a political priority for the government, and the level of democracy was in a free fall. In the mid-to-long-term span, it is highly unlikely that Macedonia would be imperilled by any external threat. By contrast, if the citizens of Macedonia are disillusioned about the progress their country is making regarding its fundamental projects, their enthusiasm for political participation and guarding the core democratic values will be radically reduced.

Notes 1. Macedonia applied for NATO membership in 1993 after the Parliament adopted the Resolution supported by all parliamentary factions. 2. In 1992, in Skopje, four people were killed during an anti-police protest. In 1995, near Tetovo, one person was shot dead when police closed the premises of an illegal university. 3. With Resolutions 817 and 845 from 1993, the UN accepted Macedonia under the temporary reference, but obliged the two sides to negotiate about their ‘difference over the name’. 4. Apart from Greece, Bulgaria questions the distinctiveness of the Macedonian people and language; Serbia denied the autonomy of the Macedonian Orthodox Church (until May 2022); whilst Albania has not recognised Macedonia under its constitutional name. 5. More on societal security in Weaver (1993). 6. This pre-dates a fifth neighbour, following the independence of Kosovo on 17 February 2008. 7. Text of Interim Accord is available on http://peacemaker.un.org/sites/ peacemaker.un.org/files/MK_950913_Interim%20Accord%20between% 20the%20Hellenic%20Republic%20and%20the%20FYROM.pdf. 8. Text of the Agreement available on https://peacemaker.un.org/sites/pea cemaker.un.org/files/MK_010813_Frameword%20Agreement%20%28O rhid%20Agreement%29.pdf. 9. After the conflict, the former NLA leadership has founded a political party—the Democratic Union for Integration (DUI) which has been part of the Government almost uninterrupted since 2002. 10. Details of the mission ‘Essential Harvest’ available on http://www.nato. int/fyrom/tfh/home.htm. 11. The Adriatic Charter was signed in Tirana in May 2003, fact sheet available on https://2009-2017.state.gov/p/eur/rls/fs/112766.htm. 12. Macedonia recognised Kosovo on 9 October 2008, but established diplomatic relations on 18 October 2009.

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13. Citizens are not required to state their religious beliefs, but the 2002 census statistics on ethnic Albanians, Turks, Bosniaks and Roma suggests that Muslims are around 32% of the population. 14. The theme of migration movements and their implications for Macedonia is developed more fully by Marina Andeva in Chapter 8 [eds. note].

References Al Jazeera English. (2015). Macedonia’s wiretapping scandal. The Listening post. https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2qhaz1. Accessed on 5 September 2016. Brubaker, R. (1996). Nationalism reframed: Nationhood and the national question in the New Europe. Cambridge University Press. Brunwasser, M. (2011, October 13). Concerns grow about authoritarianism in Macedonia. The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/14/ world/europe/concerns-grow-about-authoritarianism-in-macedonia.html? _r=0. Accessed on 9 September 2016. Butt, J., & Lynch, D. (2004). What is a failing state and when it is a security threat? EUISS. Contact Group for Kosovo. (2005). Guiding principles for the settlement of the status of Kosovo. https://www.esiweb.org/pdf/kosovo_Contact%20Group% 20-%20Ten%20Guiding%20principles%20for%20Ahtisaari.pdf. Accessed on 12 September 2016. Cornwell, S. (2008, April 5). Bush sees NATO future for Macedonia. Reuters. http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSL0535350120080405. Accessed on 12 September 2016. ESI—European Stability Initiative. (2002, February 20). The other Macedonian conflict. ESI Discussion Paper. https://www.esiweb.org/publications/othermacedonian-conflict. Accessed on 12 September 2016. Judah, T. (2004, October 18). Analysis: Macedonians fear fresh crisis. BBC. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3753004.stm. Accessed on 12 September 2016. Marusic, S. J. (2010, March 30). Journalist stands by radical Islam claims. Balkan Insight. http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/article/journalist-standsby-radical-islam-claims. Accessed on 10 September 2016. Matikj, S. (2016, September 9). Biber: Avtoritarnata piramida vo Makedonija moze da se urne na izbori. Deutsche Welle. http://www.dw.com/mk/bib ep-avtopitapnata-pipamida-vo-makedonija-moЖe-da-ce-ypne-na-izbopi/ a-19531978. Accessed on 11 September 2016. Michas, T. (2002). Unholy Alliance: Greece and Milosevi´c’s Serbia. Texas A&M University Press.

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Paquin, J. (2008). Managing controversy: US stability seeking and the birth of the Macedonian state. Foreign Policy Analysis, 4(4), 437–458. Phillips, J. (2004). Macedonia: Warlords and rebels in the Balkans. Yale University Press. Radio Free Europe. (2004, October 8). Balkan Report. http://www.rferl.org/ content/article/1340998.html. Accessed on 12 September 2016. Radio Free Europe. (2012, December 24). Macedonian budget passed amid clashes, evictions of opposition deputies. http://www.rferl.org/content/mac edonia-budget-clashes-parliament/24807240.html. Accessed on 1 September 2016. Rozen, L. (2001). NLA Autonomy Goal. Institute of War and Peace Reporting (Balkan Crisis Group 228). Shea, J. (1997). Macedonia and Greece: The struggle to define the New Balkan Nation. McFarland. Sokalsky, J. H. (2003). An ounce of prevention: Macedonia and the UN experience in preventive diplomacy. USIP. Stiblar, F. (2013). Economic growth and development in post Yugoslav countries. Wilson Centre. UNPREDEP. (1999). UNPREDEP recent developments. https://peacekeeping. un.org/sites/default/files/past/unpred_r.htm. Accessed on 10 September 2016. Voice of America. (2009, October 27). Rice backs speedy accession of Macedonia into NATO. http://www1.voanews.com/english/news/a-13-200805-07-voa82-66648087.html. Accessed on 12 September 2016. Weaver, O. (1993). Identity, migration and the new security agenda for Europe. Pinter.

CHAPTER 4

The Impossible Reconciliation of Historical Narratives: The Macedonian Name Dispute and Prospects for the Future Zhidas Daskalovski

Independent since 1991, Macedonia was not affected by any of the armed conflicts in the early 1990s when Yugoslavia fell apart. Yet, the transformation of Macedonian society was characterised by an uneasy period of state building that culminated with the internal-armed conflict in 2001. The 2001 conflict quickly ended through an EU and US mediated agreement. The so-called Ohrid Framework Agreement envisioned a series of political and constitutional reforms that aimed to accommodate the grievances of the Albanian community, while at the same time preserving the unitary character of the state. The agreement introduced features of consociational power sharing, such as a system of double majorities requiring consent from minorities represented in parliament to key decisions of the Parliament. A substantial degree of decentralisation has also been implemented (Daskalovski, 2006).

Z. Daskalovski (B) University St. Kliment Ohridski, Bitola, Macedonia

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As a result of internal reforms enhancing the rights of ethnic Albanians, relations with Albania and Kosovo have improved since 2001. The economy is high on the agenda of relations with these countries, as trade and economic ties deepen and strengthen over time. Overall relations with Serbia and Bulgaria are burdened with historical legacies. The Serbian religious authorities did not recognise the independence of the Macedonian Orthodox Church while official Sofia does not recognise as separate from Bulgarian, a Macedonian language and nation.1 Yet since independence, the cooperation with Bulgaria and Serbia had been developing rather well. Trade with Serbia is significant while cultural and personal links and exchanges abound. The two countries share European aspirations and have signed numerous bilateral agreements to assist each other in achieving this aim. Nevertheless, Bulgaria was the first country that recognised the independence of Macedonia and has supported Macedonia´s Euro-Atlantic integration until 17 November 2020 when the Bulgarian government put a veto on the Negotiation Framework Agreement of North Macedonia’s accession talks with the EU.2 Since 2012, Bulgaria has objected to opening EU negotiations, claiming that Skopje uses anti-Bulgarian propaganda and manipulates historical facts badly affecting good-neighbourly relations. Drafting a good neighbourliness agreement has ‘been on the agenda between the two countries for years and has been cited as key to Skopje’s stated ambitions of taking the country towards European Union membership’ (Leviev-Sawyer, 2014). Many of the problems in the relations between the two countries stem from the unresolved dispute over the name Macedonia has with Greece. One of the solutions to the name dispute has been rejected by the Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borisov who stated that name changes such as ‘Northern Macedonia’ are unacceptable for Bulgaria because this would substantiate the Macedonian demands over the Macedonian Bulgarian area around Blagoevgrad (Vesti, 2012). While for various historical reasons Macedonia’s dealing with its neighbours has been difficult, relations with Greece have been and are crucial for the long-term stability and development of the country. Since independence, due to Greek objections, the admission of Macedonia to membership of the United Nations in April 1993 required the new member state to be ‘provisionally referred to for all purposes within the United Nations as “the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia” pending settlement of the difference that has arisen over the name of the

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state’. Although the reference was to be used within the United Nations, other international institutions also began referring to Macedonia as a ‘former Yugoslav republic’. Despite reaching a UN-backed interim agreement in 1995 normalising the relations between the countries, since 2008 Greece has deliberately blocked Macedonia’s admission to NATO and the beginning of negotiations for EU membership. This chapter presents an overview of the dispute and the possible solutions.

Overview of the Issue On 17 November 1991, Macedonia declared its independence and asked for international recognition. On 4 December 1991, Greece declared that recognition of the new state depended on its constitutional guarantees against claims to Greek territory, cessation of hostile propaganda against Greece and exclusion of the term ‘Macedonia’ or its derivatives from the new state’s name. To ameliorate the Greek concerns that the name of the country implies territorial claims against Greece, Macedonia adopted two amendments to its Constitution on 6 January 1992. They assert that Macedonia: ‘has no territorial claims against any neighbouring states’; that its borders can be changed only in accordance with the Constitution and: ‘generally accepted international norms’; and that, in exercising care for the status and rights of its citizens and minorities in neighbouring countries, it: ‘shall not interfere in the sovereign rights of other states and their internal affairs’. The changes were not enough for Greece which continued to insist that the new state relinquish the name ‘Macedonia’. Greece blocked the EU recognition of the country despite the fact that in January 1992, Macedonia met all the conditions for recognition imposed by the European Community confirmed through the opinion of the European Arbitrage Commission. Denied recognition by the EU, Macedonia turned to the United Nations filling an application for membership. Again Greece opposed this application. After a prolonged process, the admission of Macedonia to UN membership in April 1993 by the General Assembly Resolution 47/225 (1993) was associated with the provision that it be: ‘provisionally referred to for all purposes within the United Nations as “the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia”, pending settlement of the difference that has arisen over the name of the State’. When the United States recognised Macedonia on 17 February 1994, Greece replied by severing diplomatic ties with Skopje, blocking EU aid and imposing a

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blockade on Macedonian goods moving to and from the port of Thessaloniki with the exception of humanitarian aid. Greece and Macedonia normalised bilateral relations in an Interim Accord signed in New York on 13 September 1995. Both countries committed to continuing the talks under UN auspices while Greece agreed not to obstruct the Republic’s applications for membership of international bodies as long as it did so under its provisional UN appellation. This opened the door for Macedonia to join a variety of international organisations and initiatives, including the Council of Europe, the OSCE and the Partnership for Peace. However, in 2008 Greece blocked Macedonia’s integration into NATO and the dispute continued. Consequently, on 17 November 2008, Macedonia instituted proceedings before the International Court of Justice, alleging that Greece’s objection to its application to join NATO breached the 1995 Interim Accord between these two States. Despite decisively winning the proceedings, Macedonia’s integration to NATO and the EU continued to be blocked by Greece.

The Greek Position on the ‘Name Dispute’ The official Greek position regarding the name has not changed since the early 1990s (Kofos, 2001, 2009; Floudas, 1996; Zahariadis, 1996). Calling upon the exclusiveness of its own interpretation of history, the Greek government claimed that the Republic of Macedonia does not have a historical right to use the names Macedonia and Macedonians and that it will have to add an adjective to these names in order to clearly differentiate and delimit itself geographically and historically from the Northern province in Greece. On the eve of the Bucharest, NATO Summit the Greek Foreign Minister Dora Bakoyannis argued that the name ‘Republic of Macedonia is linked with the deliberate plan to take over a part of Greek territory that has had a Greek identity for more than three millennia and is associated with immense pain and suffering by the Greek people’ (Bakoyannis, 2008). The Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs categorically claimed that ‘historically, the Greek name Macedonia refers to the state and civilisation of the ancient Macedonians which, beyond doubt are part of Greece’s national and historical heritage’ (MFA of Greece, 2016). For Greece: ‘there is no chance of FYROM acceding to the EU and NATO under the name Republic of Macedonia’ and ‘the insistence of FYROM Slavo-Macedonians in standing by their intransigent and negative stance towards efforts to resolve the issue’ (ibid.). Greece’s

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key demands in the negotiations, contained in the official document of the Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs, are that the Republic of Macedonia accepts: (i) ‘a definitive composite name with geographical qualification for all purposes (erga omnes)’ and for all uses, while at the same time Macedonia (ii) ‘genuinely renounces the usurpation of the historical and national heritage of the Greek people’ (MFA of Greece, 2016). The Greek position has been articulated in the writings of Evangelos Kofos, one of the most distinguished authors on the ‘Macedonian issue’. He claims that different historical, cultural, regional, ethnic and legal references are identified with one and the same name, Macedonia, and that whoever succeeds to impose on foreign languages its own version of ‘Macedonian’, acquires international monopoly for its use. Moreover, in an indirect way, it lays claim to anything identified as ‘Macedonian’, including different peoples or communities identified as ‘Macedonian’, diverse ‘Macedonian’ historical and cultural values, even commodities from different Macedonian regions or countries (Kofos, 2005, p. 132). The constitutional name ‘Macedonia’ is, however, identical with the name of the wider geographic region ‘Macedonia’ (Kofos, 2009, p. 2). According to Kofos, in the early 1990s, the emergence of an internationally recognised Macedonian state stimulated and, to a certain degree, popularised the monopolisation of the ethnic variant of the adjective ‘Macedonian’ at the expense of the regional/cultural one. Kofos explains that the Greek government as well as all major parties favour a compound geographical name for their neighbouring country, provided its state name clearly defines Macedonian regions within its own jurisdiction. Therefore, Kofos suggests a new constitutional name for the Republic of Macedonia, which would replace the current one as well as the temporary international appellation. This name would be a name with a prefix which would describe or identify clearly the region over which this country exercises legal jurisdiction (that is: North, Gorna, or Vardarska) (Kofos, 2010). Moreover, the new state name would apply to all uses (internal, bilateral and international) while the citizenship would follow the state name. The name for the majority ethnic group in Macedonia internationally would be ‘Makedonci’ and the products of that country would also not be transliterated so that, for example, the wine produced in Kavadarci region of the Republic of Macedonia would be known as ‘makedonsko vino’.

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The Macedonian Position on the ‘Name Dispute’ Macedonia has a legitimate right to its name and identity based on various arguments, be they legal, moral, historical or grounded on liberaldemocratic ideas. The simplest Macedonian argument regarding the name dispute is that the case is unambiguous as there are no two states claiming the same nationality and the same name, a regional identity (in Greece) should not be confused with an ethno-national identity in Macedonia. There cannot be confusion between a country and a region, as the name ‘Macedonia’ is used by Greece to designate one of its provinces which is not an international legal person. In that context, there is a simple answer to the question ‘who is/can be a Macedonian today?’ If we speak about a person’s (ethno)national belonging, then a Macedonian is someone who lives in the Republic of Macedonia and identifies with belonging to the Macedonian nation. Macedonians by citizenship, on the other hand, are all those living in the Republic of Macedonia regardless of their choice of (ethno)national belongings. A Macedonian is also someone from any of the three regions of Macedonia who chooses to develop a regional Macedonian identity regardless of their own citizenship or ethno-national (be)longing. Another argument in defence of the right of Macedonia to use its name is the right to self-determination. Self- determination is a principle, often seen as a moral and legal right, that: ‘all peoples have the right [to] freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development’ (ICCPR). As Roemer writes, ‘it seems that implicit at least within self-determination lies an acknowledgement that peoples, at the minimum, may freely pursue their own forms of culture and identity…it would follow that it is for these peoples to determine the content of their culture or identity, including their collective name’ (Reimer, 1995, p. 359). Alternatively put, the right to ethnicity, nationality and to identity is a fundamental principle of international law, a central tenet of the international order. A nation’s existence is a daily plebiscite, just as an individual’s existence is a perpetual affirmation of life (Renan, 1996, p. 41). Macedonians decided on their self-determination on 8 September 1991, when at a referendum of more than 95% voted for a sovereign and independent state with a turnout of 76% (Klimovski, 1994, pp. 376, 380). Despite all the Greek pressure, Macedonian citizens by a large majority refused any changes to their identity and the name of the country even if NATO membership is at stake (Klekovski, 2011).

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In that regard, it is surely fundamental to the notion of sovereignty and self-determination that: ‘a State should have the right to establish its own constitutional system in conformity with obligations imposed by international law (for example, with respect to human rights treaties), and to choose its own national symbols including both its name and its flag … the subject of the dispute between Greece and Macedonia clearly relates to an issue which, as a matter of sovereignty, should fall exclusively within the discretion of Macedonia itself’ (Craven, 1995, p. 238). The inherent right of a state to have a name can be derived from the necessity for a legal personality to have a legal identity. In the absence of such an identity, the juridical person (such as a state) could, to a considerable degree (or even completely), lose its capacity to conclude agreements and independently enter into and conduct its relations with other juridical persons. The name of a state ‘appears to be an essential element of its juridical personality and its statehood, the principles of the sovereign equality of states and the inviolability of their juridical personality lead to the conclusion that the choice of a name is an inalienable right of the state’ (Janev, 1999). Therefore, the inability to use the name of Macedonia is an interference of the UN in the affairs of a state—such as the choice of its constitutional name—which lies essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of that state, contrary to Article 2(7) of the UN Charter. Macedonia is unequal with other UN member-states due to the obligation to discuss its own name with Greece and has derogated its juridical personality in the field of representation contrary to the principle of ‘sovereign equality of the Members’, Article 2(1) of the Charter. It is inconsistent with the principles of the juridical equality of states (GA Resolution 2625) and non-discrimination in representation and membership (UN, 1975). From the viewpoint of representation in international organisations, the condition imposed on Macedonia—‘to be provisionally referred to as Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia’, is contrary to Article 83 of the Vienna Convention on the representation of states, which provides that ‘in the application of the present Convention no discrimination shall be made as between states’ (Article 83 of the Vienna Convention, 1975). Traditionally, states have benefitted from what seems to be a generally understood right to the freedom of expression. This ability for a state to do and say what it desires ‘comes not as an expansion of much newer human rights law, but rather from basic notions of state sovereignty and the equality of states’ (Reimer, 1995, p. 359). Because the name of a state

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represents an inseparable and significant part of its sovereignty, Greece denies Macedonian sovereignty. Sovereignty comprises what is under the exclusive competence of the state—domain réservé, that is, political and territorial sovereignty (which includes the population). The name of the state refers to both, in other words, it is linked to the state with regard to its political independence and territorial integrity whereby a state is physically and politically delimited from other subjects or states in the international community (Lozanovska, 2009, p. 4). Furthermore, it should be pointed out that traditionally from the point of view of public international law, states may: ‘call themselves whatever they wish because a state’s name is fundamentally a purely domestic matter, and it is a bedrock principle that every state “has the right freely to choose and develop its political, social, economic and cultural systems”’ (Froomkin, 2004). It is an accepted principle of international law that flows from the sovereign equality of states, that each state: ‘has the right freely to choose and develop its political, social, economic and cultural systems’ (Declaration on Principles, 1970). There appears to be: ‘no basis in international law or practice for the Greek demand that Macedonia change its name, claiming that the right to use that name should belong exclusively to Greece’ (Henkin et al., 1993, p. 253). Most apparent from the Macedonian case is that its right to determine its own external forms of representation was violated since it has to be negotiated with Greece. Moreover, historically Greece had no objections to the name of its northern neighbour during Yugoslav times (Mircev, 2001). From 1944 to 1991, the ‘People’s Republic of Macedonia’ and later the ‘Socialist Republic of Macedonia’ was one of the six constituent units of federal Yugoslavia. The ‘dispute’ over the name is a euphemism to the Greek objections, in some cases direct and open and in others indirect and concealed, to the very existence of the Macedonian state and nation. Greek foreign policy towards Macedonia is the result of the ideology of the ethnic nationalism that has dominated Greek society since its inception. Greece denies the existence of a Macedonian nation and a Macedonian minority on its territory because such recognition would run counter to the templates of ethnic homogeneity and purity that define Greek ethnic nationalism (Michas, 2002).

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Clashing National Narratives and Nation-Building Nation-building is a ubiquitous process as any given political system operates within a certain cultural framework and nation-building is inevitably tied to a particular culture, language or history. Rarely however, do states engage in ‘liberal nation-building’, nation-building that takes into consideration the interests of members of national minorities who wished to preserve their language, culture or particular aspects of it (Daskalovski, 2005). More often than not, the nation-building process aims exactly to negate the ‘historical narratives’ and cultural peculiarities of minority ethnic groups. The aim is to have the citizens accept a common ‘national narrative’ and create a nation by transforming the collective identity of a society composed of one or a few ethnic groups (Calhoun, 1997). The ‘name dispute’ is difficult to solve amicably because it affects the nationbuilding of the two states as a result of the incompatible narratives about the history of Macedonia. Every nation has a certain ‘national narrative’, a set of historical, cultural, economic and political experiences that are passed to the next generations through the nation-building process and family stories. Components of this ‘national narrative’ may include stories and legends related to the nation’s origin, great heroes, enemies, past sufferings (collective and individual), memories of war, as well as heritage related to poetry, literature and music. It is a mistake to understand national histories as a set of historic truths; rather, they should be seen as something closer to stories. To hold them up to rational scrutiny: ‘destroys the possibility of human community, national myths are not lies and fabrications; they are inspiring narratives, stemming from human imagination, in which we tell ourselves who we are or want to be’ (Abizadeh, 2004, p. 293). Benedict Anderson makes this point explicit: ‘all communities larger than primordial villages of face-to-face contact (and perhaps even these) are imagined … communities are to be distinguished, not by their falsity/genuineness, but by the style in which they are imagined’ (Anderson, 1991, p. 6). In the Balkans, the emerging nation-states have developed historical narratives to help justify their irredentism and their historical rights in different parts of the Ottoman Empire. ‘Official’ Balkan historical narratives postulate the existence of a nation back in time and then proceed to interpret the historical record as the continuous evolution of this

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‘imagined community’ from that particular point (Kitromilides, 1983). Modern Greek national identity is an outcome of a nation-building process that took place in the Balkans between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Macedonian national identity is an outcome of similar nation-building processes, with the difference that the idea of creating a Macedonian nation-state came decades later than the ‘national awakening’ of other Balkan nations (Jelavich, 1983). However, the diffusion of historical narratives in the nation-building process should not be accepted uncritically since they entail a considerable element of ‘myth-making’. Clearly, the Greek and Macedonian national narratives are no exception. As Anthony Smith notes: ‘where there are clashing interpretations of ancestral homelands and cultural heritages as for example in Macedonia, Kashmir, Nagorno Karabagh, and Palestine – normal conflicts of interest are turned into cultural wars’ (Smith, 1999, p. 9). In fact, the dispute between the two countries over the name of the new Republic is not only part of a ‘global cultural war’ that the two states have been fighting over the control of symbols, traditions and glorious ancestors; it is a conflict over the validity of the national narratives of both countries which to a greater or lesser extent attempt to convince the world audience that their historical narrative is correct (Featherstone, 1990, p. 10). It is a struggle for the legitimating of a particular national narrative, and thus an identity that legitimises a group as an entity that has a ‘right’ to a territory as its ‘natural’ habitat (Bourdieu, 1989).

Legal Solutions How is it possible to solve the dispute? One understanding is that the problem is due to a legal misrecognition of the right of the Republic of Macedonia to use its own Macedonian name. Rectifying the obligation to use the UN reference for its name and to discuss the resolution of the ‘name issue’ with Greece would therefore solve the problem. In addition, re-establishing the use of its constitutionally defined name in the UN and in international organisations would isolate Greek objections to the Euro-Atlantic integration of the country. The admission of Macedonia to UN membership in April 1993 by the General Assembly Resolution 47/225 (1993) is legally problematic as the additional conditions related to the name of the state constitute violations of the Article 4(1) of the UN Charter interpreted by the Advisory opinion of ICJ, of 28 May, 1948 (Janev, 1999, 2001). The preamble

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to Security Council Resolution 817, by which Macedonia was recommended for admission, recognised that ‘the applicant fulfils the criteria for membership laid down in Article 4 of the Charter of the United Nations’. According to the Admission of a State to the United Nations and General Assembly Resolution 197, this statement means that the applicant has fulfilled all the required conditions for admission to membership in the United Nations and that no other conditions may be imposed (Janev, 1999, 2001). The invalidation of part (b) of the UN Resolution 47/225 (1993) can be achieved by a new resolution, which would also affirm the use of the constitutional name of Macedonia within the UN system. Alternatively, Macedonia could request the General Assembly to question before the International Court of Justice the legality of resolution of 47/225 (1993) and Security Council resolution 817 (1993) in their parts related to the imposition of additional conditions on Macedonia regarding its name for its admission to UN membership (in other words, their compatibility with the provisions of Article 4(1) of the Charter). The text of the resolution could be: ‘Are the specific conditions enshrined in resolutions GA Res. 47/225 (1993) of the General Assembly and SC Res. 817 (1993) of the Security Council in their parts relating to the denomination “Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia”, within the requirement for the settlement of the “difference that has arisen over the name of the State”, outside the scope of the exhaustive conditions of Article 4(1) of the Charter of the United Nations and legally in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations?’ (Janev, 2001, p. 83).

Political Solutions There is a political compromise solution that could respect the concerns of both sides. The solution would be for the country to be known internationally as the Republic of Makedonija. This is a name of Slavonic origin and how Macedonians refer to their country in their own language. Greece would be ‘left’ with the name ‘Macedonia’, to invoke ancient Macedon. Makedonijans could co-exist along with the Greek Macedonians. As part of the compromise a declaration in which the Republic of Makedonija would acknowledge that ancient Macedonia is part of Greece’s historical legacy could be adopted by the government in Skopje. In return, Greece would allow the members of the Macedonian ethnocultural nation to be named as ‘ethnic Macedonians’ and the language to be called ‘Macedonian (Slavonic)’. Both governments could claim victory,

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one having won international recognition under basically the same name as in the constitution, the other having protected the Macedonian-ness of Greece’s history, past and present. This is more than a matter of gaining membership of the EU and NATO—Macedonia’s very future depends on a resolution. If the EU continues to side with Greece, it would in effect be declaring that the Copenhagen criteria for EU membership are not important in Macedonia’s case and that the most important factor is an additional criterion unrelated to democracy or the rule of law. More importantly, the possibilities for further soft mediation by the EU in Macedonian-Albanian political disputes would diminish. Macedonian nationalism might grow, while Macedonia’s large ethnic Albanian minority might become restive watching the state of Albania, already a member of NATO, move forward with EU integration. Ethnic Albanian nationalism is already being encouraged by Kosovo’s independence. Supporting the Greek position signals to nationalists around the Balkans that Macedonia is not yet a ‘normal’ country; not, a state that has a secure and prosperous future in the EU. With Kosovo’s independence, Bosnia-Herzegovina’s problems and Serbia’s wavering already complicating Balkan realities, the EU does not need another Balkan crisis. Macedonian stability, which brought this country a remarkable freedom of press, is crucial as any new conflict there could cause a wider conflict including Bulgaria, Turkey and Albania.

A Post Scriptum Note By presenting an overview of the conflict in the 1990s, we have shown that the Macedonian name dispute is a clash over historical narratives and the right to claim the origins of the Macedonian ethnic group and nation today and in the ancient past. We have outlined the legal remedies to the 1993 UN admission of the country under the provisional reference and a political solution with an agreed international name for the country ‘Republic of Makedonija’. Neither option was used to solve the dispute as since 2016 the social democrat Macedonian government sought to accommodate Greek demands in order to be allowed to accede to NATO and start negotiations with EU. This new policy resulted in an agreement between Skopje and Athens, on the issue in the spring of 2018. The so-called Prespa Agreement was signed on 17 June 2018. Accordingly, Macedonia was renamed as the Republic of North Macedonia with the new name to be used domestically, in all bilateral relations and in

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all regional and international organisations and institutions. The deal includes the recognition of the Macedonian language as being Slavonic, and the citizenship of the country as ‘Macedonian/citizen of the Republic of North Macedonia’. There is an explicit clarification that the citizens of the country are not related to the ancient Macedonians (Article 7). All public institutions, as well as state-funded cultural organisations will be defined by the term of ‘North Macedonia’. Additionally, the agreement stipulates the removal of the Vergina Sun from public use in Macedonia and the formation of a Committee for the review of school textbooks and maps in both countries for the removal of irredentist content and to align them with UNESCO and Council of Europe standards. Critics stress that the untangling of the Macedonian accession process into the EU and NATO should never undermine the right of a nation to its own existence. A name is the core of not only individual but also collective identity. The right to internal self-determination of an entire population of a state is stipulated in the Human Rights Covenants, the UN Friendly Relations Declaration, and other international legal instruments. Hence, no government can waive the Macedonian people’s right to self-determination. Despite criticisms, the Agreement has unblocked Macedonia’s accession to NATO and is expected to do the same for the start of EU integration talks. On 6 February 2019, NATO’s 29 members signed the accession protocol with the Republic of North Macedonia and on 27 March 2020 the country became a member state of NATO.

Notes 1. There was a change of heart on 24 May 2022, when the Serbian Patriarchate announced that it had recognised the autocephaly of the Macedonian Orthodox Church—Archdiocese of Ohrid. 2. The theme of Bulgaria’s rejection of the Macedonian ethno-linguistic identity is more fully analysed in Chapter 12 by Ognen Vangelov [eds. note].

References Abizadeh, A. (2004). Historical truth, national myths and liberal democracy: On the coherence of liberal nationalism. The Journal of Political Philosophy, 12(3), 291–313. Anderson, B. (1991). Imagined communities. Verso.

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Bakoyannis, D. (2008, March 31). The view from Athens. International Herald Tribune. Bourdieu, P. (1989). Social space and symbolic power. Sociological Theory, 7 (1), 14–25. Calhoun, C. (1997). Nationalism. Open University Press. Craven, M. C. R. (1995). What’s in a name? The former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and issues of statehood. Australian Year Book of International Law, 16, 199–239. Daskalovski, Z. (2005). Minorities in nation-building processes. Friedrich Ebert Stiftung. Daskalovski, Z. (2006). Walking on the edge: Consolidating multiethnic Macedonia 1989–2004. Globic Press. Declaration on Principles of International Law Concerning Friendly Relations and Co-operation Among States in Accordance with the Charter of the United Nations, GAOR Res. 2625, U.N. GAOR, 27th Sess., Supp. No. 18, at 124, U.N. Doc. A/8018 (1970). Featherstone, M. (1990). Global culture: Nationalism, globalisation and modernity. Sage. Floudas, D. A. (1996). A name for a conflict or a conflict for a name? An analysis of Greece’s dispute with FYROM. Journal of Political and Military Sociology, 24(2), 283–321. Froomkin, A. M. (2004). When we say US™, we mean it! Houston Law Review, 41(3), 839–884. General Assembly Resolution 2625 (XXV) of 24 October 1970. Henkin, L., Pugh, R. C., Schachter, O., & Smith, H. (1993). International law: Cases and materials (3rd ed.). Westgroup. International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), Article 1. Interim Accord (with related letters and translations of the Interim Accord in the Languages of the Contracting Parties), signed in New York 13 September 1995; entered into force 13 October 1995, 1891 U.N.T.S. I-32193; 34 I.L.M. 1461. Janev, I. (1999). Legal aspects of the use of a provisional name for Macedonia in the United Nations system. American Journal of International Law, 93(1), 155–160. Janev, I. (2001). Legal responsibility of the United Nations for unlawful admission of Macedonia to UN membership. Macedonian Affairs, 3(1), 53–88. Jelavich, B. (1983). History of the Balkans. Cambridge University Press. Kitromilides, P. (1983). The enlightenment East and West: A comparative perspective on the ideological origins of the Balkan political traditions. Canadian Review of Studies in Nationalism, 10(1), 51–70. Klimovski, S. (1994). Ustavno Pravo. Union Trade.

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Klekovski, S. (2011). Macedonia name dispute (Public Views in Macedonia). MCIC and IDSCS. Kofos, E. (2001). Greek policy considerations over FYROM independence and recognition. In J. Pettifer (Ed.), The New Macedonian question (pp. 226– 263). Palgrave. Kofos, E. (2005). The controversy over the terms ‘Macedonians’ and ‘Macedonian’: A probable exit scenario. Southeast European and Black Sea Studies, 5(1), 129–133. Kofos, E. (2009). The current Macedonian issue between Athens and Skopje: Is there an option for a Brbeakthrough? ELIAMEP Thesis 3. Kofos, E. (2010, October 20). Prospects for resolving the name issue. NATO Parliamentary Assembly’s Rose-Roth seminar, Skopje. http://www.macedo nian-heritage.gr/Contributions/Prospects%20for%20resolving%20the%20n ame%20issue.pdf Leviev-Sawyer, C. (2014, May 18). Plevneliev accepts Ivanov’s offer on good neighbourly relations agreement between Bulgaria and FYR Macedonia. Independent Balkans News Agency. Lozanovska, J. (2009). The name issue exposing and deconstructing the Greek arguments. Evro Balkan. Michas, T. (2002). The Unholy Alliance: Greece and Milosevic’s Serbia during the 1990s. Texas A&M University Press. Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Greece. (2016). The FYROM name issue. Mircev, D. (2001). Engineering the foreign policy of a new independent state: The case of Macedonia, 1990–96. In J. Pettifer (Ed.), The New Macedonian question (pp. 201–225). Palgrave-Macmillan. Reimer, L. (1995). Macedonia: Cultural right or cultural appropriation? University of Toronto Faculty of Law Review, 53(2), 359–375. Renan, E. (1996). What is a nation? (Qu’est-ce qu’une nation?). In G. Eley & R. G. Suny (Eds.), Becoming national: A reader (pp. 41–55). Oxford University Press. Smith, A. D. (1999). Myths and memories of the nation. Oxford University Press. UN Doc. A / CONF. 67/16 (1975, March 14). Vesti. (2012, June 8). Borisov: Ne priemame imeto Severna Makedoniia. https://www.vesti.bg/bulgaria/politika/borisov-ne-priemame-imetoseverna-makedoniia-4872431?page=__id__&comments=1 Vienna Convention on the Representation of States in their Relations with International Organisations of a Universal Character, UN Doc. A/CONF. 67/16 (1975, March 14). Zahariadis, N. (1996). Greek policy toward the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. Journal of Modern Greek Studies, 14(2), 303–328.

CHAPTER 5

The Economic Transition of Macedonia Marjan Petreski

The thorny road Macedonia took after gaining independence from Yugoslavia was confronted with a bad process of privatisation, a collapse in trade, large workforce layoffs, high inflation and a stagnant economy. The separation of Macedonia from the Yugoslav monetary union of the then dinar and the introduction of Macedonia’s own currency, the denar, coincided with a period of galloping prices and empty shelves in the supermarkets. Then the emigration crisis ensued including large layoffs of the Macedonian workforce to the West, and the Macedonian brain-drain— a problem rooted in the early transition years which continues until the present day.

Economic Developments at the Crossroads The Macedonian economy experienced the strong impact and lingering effects of the dissolution of Yugoslavia. Despite this, other Yugoslav republics were even more severely hit by the Yugoslav breakup—because

M. Petreski (B) School of Business Economics and Management, University American College Skopje, Skopje, North Macedonia

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 R. Hudson and I. Dodovski (eds.), Macedonia’s Long Transition, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-20773-0_4

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they experienced armed conflict. Nevertheless, they were able to recover quite swiftly, while Macedonia’s recovery was delayed until 1996; and even then, the growth of GDP remained fairly timid (Chart 5.1). The main reason for the poor performance of the Macedonian economy in the initial years after independence is twofold, based upon its dependence on trade with the other republics and the privatisation process (Velickovski et al., 2016). According to Štiblar (2013), 41.9% of Macedonian product was sold to the other republics within Yugoslavia, the percentage being the second largest among them. In addition, a major part of this production was in intermediate goods which were feeding other production processes taking place in the more advanced republics of the former Yugoslavia, such as Slovenia and Serbia. With the breakup of Yugoslavia, Macedonia lost its markets. Ill-equipped with the necessary skills for a fast reorientation of exports to other destinations, production and export fell considerably and were unable to return to normality in the short term. Secondly, the privatisation process which commenced even 60.0% 50.0% 40.0% 30.0% 20.0% 10.0% 0.0% -10.0% -20.0% -30.0% -40.0% -50.0% 1991

1992

1993

1994

1995

1996

Bosnia and Herzegovina

Croatia

Macedonia

Montenegro

Serbia

Slovenia

1997

1998

1999

Chart 5.1 GDP growth rates of the Yugoslav republics after Yugoslavia’s dissolution (Source Penn World Tables)

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40 35 30 25 20 15 10 5 0 1991

1992

1993 BH

Chart 5.2

1994 CRO

MKD

1995 MON

1996 SER

1997

1998

1999

SLO

Unemployment rates (Source International Labour Organisation)

before the breakup of Yugoslavia (1989) was carried out fairly swiftly, but faced large layoffs, company closures and a rapid decline in production or stoppages. The main ingredient of the first privatisation act (1989) was the possibility of internal privatisation, in other words the ‘redemption’ of a company by its employees, but this turned into the seizing of the majority of shares in the hands of the socialist directors, which then led to rapidly increasing income inequality and an impoverishment of the working class. Later, privatisation acts (1993, 1996) tried to involve more market elements in the privatisation process. However, this left Macedonia with the highest and ever-increasing unemployment rate among all the former Yugoslav republics (Chart 5.2), and, as Petroski (1998) argues, characterised the Macedonian and Romanian privatisation processes as the worst executed ones in all the countries of the former-socialist bloc.

The Denar and the Stabilisation Programmes These were not the only economic problems of the early transition period. Macedonia was also plagued by a hyperinflation which was to escalate in 1993 (Chart 5.3). Until the monetary independence of April 1992, Macedonia remained in the Yugoslav monetary union of the then dinar,

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which enabled people from the border region of Serbia to cross the border daily, make large retail purchases thereby leaving the stores empty, but full of dinars, which were rapidly losing their value. The government had to rush in and introduce its own currency, the denar, on 26 April 1992. The conditions for introducing the new currency were not favourable (Petrevski, 2005): there was a galloping inflation, the lack of membership in the International Monetary Fund, and hence support from the IMF and other international organisations, to say nothing of the impact of the Greek embargo, and a fall in production, alongside the closures of traditional markets. Consequently, a comprehensive stabilisation package was introduced to serve as an anchor for the new monetary policy. Monetary targeting formed the substance of the package, projecting a gradual deceleration of monetary growth, accompanied by a reduction of budget expenditures, wage and price controls and fixing the denar to the German Mark. Nevertheless, the pressures on the currency were large. The denar was devalued several times between April 1992 and May 1993, when the peg was abandoned and the currency witnessed a free fall, which further fuelled the inflation (Chart 5.4). Accompanied by a lack of political support, the first stabilisation programme could be considered as a total failure. 2500.0 2055.7

2000.0

1500.0

1000.0

500.0 357.9 202.4

126.6

0.0

16.4

2.5

1.3

0.5

-1.3

-500.0 1991

Chart 5.3

1992

1993

1994

1995

1996

1997

1998

1999

Macedonian inflation (Source World Development Indicators)

5

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81

30 25 20 15 10 5

1992-4 1992-6 1992-8 1992-10 1992-12 1993-2 1993-4 1993-6 1993-8 1993-10 1993-12 1994-2 1994-4 1994-6 1994-8 1994-10 1994-12 1995-2 1995-4 1995-6 1995-8 1995-10 1995-12

0

Chart 5.4 Exchange rate of the Macedonian denar to the German mark (Source National Bank of the Republic of Macedonia)

By the time of the second stabilisation programme (early 1994), Macedonia had become a member of the IMF. The new package was backed by the Fund, as well as winning stronger political support at home. The key ingredient was the anchoring of the denar to the German Mark, restrictive monetary and fiscal policy and wage controls. Hence, as the pull-back of prices started throughout 1994 and the economy stabilised, the currency was re-pegged to the German Mark in October 1995 and then to the Euro, until the present day, with only one devaluation of 16% in July 1997. The peg is considered to be the cornerstone of macroeconomic stability endured until the present day (Jovanovic & Petreski, 2012, 2014; Petreski, 2013a).

Open Economy, (Political) Instability and Exogenous Shocks Notwithstanding the hard times in the first half of the 1990s, the economy continued experiencing highs and lows in the following period

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(Chart 5.5). A constant determinant for this would be the frequent and sometimes sizeable exogenous shocks that kept on hitting the economy. Namely, the fact that Macedonia had two basic disadvantages: first of all, the fact that Macedonia belonged to a geographical region that was well known for its past conflicts, including interethnic tensions; and secondly, the fact that Macedonia is a small and open economy on which any adverse development in the regional and global economy is quickly transmitted. The exogenous shocks hitting the Macedonian economy were frequently of a non-economic nature, favouring the country’s fragile economic structure. They started with the withdrawal of the Yugoslav army from Macedonian territory, the battle for international recognition and the emerging dispute with Greece around the name of the country. All of this was aggravated by ethnic tensions between the two largest ethnic groups: Macedonians and Albanians. Greece imposed a trade embargo on Macedonia between February 1994 and October 1995, to reflect the name dispute and the disagreement around the Macedonian flag. It has been estimated that the economic damage of the embargo amounted to about two billion US dollars. The effect was reinforced 8 6 4 2 0 -2 -4 -6

-10

1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015

-8

Chart 5.5 tors)

Macedonian economic growth (Source World Development Indica-

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THE ECONOMIC TRANSITION OF MACEDONIA

83

by ongoing UN sanctions against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (1992–1996), which Macedonia had to put up with, and which altogether resulted in the closure of the main trade route of the country (Corridor 10). Another shock of a non-economic nature arrived in 1999, when NATO bombed Serbia as a result of its position over Kosovo. Macedonia was suddenly confronted with an influx of between 220,000 and 360,000 refugees, representing between 11 and 18% of the Macedonian population. While heavy aid programmes were available at that time, the indirect economic damage was devastating due to the loss of the Serbian market—which was key to Macedonian trade, as well as the closure of the main trade route for Macedonian trade with the European market. Soon after this, Macedonia went on to confront internal military conflict when the Macedonian security system was confronted with the attacks of the paramilitary National Liberation Army fighting for better rights for Albanians living in Macedonia. The economy saw a 3% decline, and a concomitant increase in unemployment. The unstable political environment throughout this period can be confirmed by many leading indicators. Chart 5.6 presents some indicators from the World Bank on: the rule of law, the control of corruption and political stability. All of them show an improvement, but only after the second half of the 2000s, which explains a large portion of the hurdles the economy faced, as well as ‘justifying’ the lengthy transition in Macedonia. The non-economic shocks hitting the country, alongside those bad or inefficient economic policies and reforms introduced during the period after 1991 could also explain the large proportion of unsatisfactory performance of the economy overall. It was only in 2006 that GDP per capita (in constant local currency units) exceeded the level of 1990 (just before the breakup of Yugoslavia) and even later far exceeding the level of mid1980s. Daskalov et al. (2003) argue for several reasons, that the poor performance of the Macedonian economy arose either from the noneconomic shocks hitting the economy, or because of the open character of the economy. First of all, Macedonia has scarce natural resources and as such is dependent upon the external sector. However, the external sector itself had underperformed since independence. While it kept increasing on average (Chart 5.7), it was accompanied by a faster increase in imports, which resulted in a widening trade deficit. Second, the country proved unattractive for FDIs (Foreign Direct Investments), partly because of the political instability of the 1990s and early 2000s, but also due to its small size (Jovanovic & Jovanovic,

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0.4 0.2 0 -0.2 -0.4 -0.6 -0.8 -1 -1.2 -1.4

Rule of law

Control of corruption

Political stability

Chart 5.6 Some indices on the political stability and corruption (Note Indices range between −2.5 [weak] and +2.5 [strong]. Source World Bank Governance Indicators) 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10

1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015

0

Exports of goods and services (% of GDP) Imports of goods and services (% of GDP)

Chart 5.7 Export and import of Macedonia (Source World Development Indicators)

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THE ECONOMIC TRANSITION OF MACEDONIA

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14 12 10 8 6 4 2

2014

2015

2013

2011

2012

2010

2009

2008

2007

2006

2005

2003

2004

2001

2002

1999

2000

1998

1997

1995

1996

1994

0

Foreign direct investment, net inflows (% of GDP) Personal remittances, received (% of GDP)

Chart 5.8 FDIs and remittances in Macedonia (Source World Development Indicators)

2015). The average level of FDI in the 1994–2015 period was 3.7% of GDP, which is one of the lowest in the region (Velickovski et al., 2016). However, the current account could have been sustained due to the large and persistent inflows of remittances in the country, which outweighed FDIs in all years, except when large monopolies were privatised (Chart 5.8).

The Economy on the Road to the EU The prevalent openness of the Macedonian economy has actually been driven by the economic ties of the country with the European Union. Macedonia approached the European Union in 2000, after nine years of independence from Yugoslavia. The first step towards joining the EU was the initiation of the Stabilisation and Association Process, the result of which was the Stabilisation and Association Agreement (SAA) signed on 9 April 2001 in Luxembourg, which entered into force on 1 April 2004. The parts regulating trade and trade-related issues, entered into force earlier on 1 June 2001. The SAA stipulated provisions concerning the free movement of goods, services, labour and capital. Hence, the creation of a

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M. PETRESKI

free trade area (FTA) between the EU and Macedonia, with a maximum transition phase of ten years (for details on SAA see Daskalov et al., 2003). Table 5.1 presents the trade shares (both export and import) of Macedonia with the EU and the Western Balkan countries. It is clear that the share has grown over the decades: first, because over time Macedonia became more and more dependent on the EU in trade terms, substituting for the traditional lost eastern markets after gaining independence from Yugoslavia; second, because the EU has been enlarging itself (mainly with the large wave of enlargement in 2004). By 2014, the trade share with the EU amounted to about two thirds of the whole trade volume. Interestingly, an additional 12–25% of total trade was conducted with the other countries of the Western Balkans, which now form CEFTA2006. Given that these countries are themselves very much dependent on trade with the EU, it appears that in trade terms Macedonia is almost entirely dependent on the EU. Germany tops the list, with a growing share approximating a fourth of total trade volume, and followed by Great Britain, Italy, Greece and Bulgaria (Petreski, 2013b). Macedonia also depends heavily on the EU in financial matters. The banking system is composed of 15 banks, of which 11 are predominantly owned by foreign banks. These hold about 75% of banking assets, of which more than 80% originate from the EU. However, the largest bank is domestically owned. The second-largest bank is Greek owned, while the third-largest is Slovenian-owned. France, Bulgaria, Austria and Germany hold the ownership of the remaining part of the banking system. Similarly, the insurance system, albeit being considerably smaller than the banking system, is dominated by foreigners as 14 out of 15 insurance companies are foreign-owned, of which 11 are owned by insurance groups residing in the EU (ISAM, 2014). Also, a major part of the total FDI flowing into the economy originates from the EU. As Table 5.2 suggests, the share of EU-based FDI Table 5.1 Trade shares of Macedonia with the EU and the Western Balkans

European Union Out of which: Germany Western Balkans

1994 (%)

2004 (%)

2014 (%)

36.2 15.6

67.9 20.1

68.8 23.3

18.1

25.0

11.8

Source State Statistical Office of Macedonia

5

Table 5.2 FDI shares of Macedonia with the EU

THE ECONOMIC TRANSITION OF MACEDONIA

European Union

87

1997 (%)

2004 (%)

2014 (%)

39.0

77.1

84.3

Source National Bank of the Republic of Macedonia

in Macedonia has been increasing over time (even if the enlargement in 2004 is controlled for), suggesting that the dependence of Macedonia on the EU in financial terms has also been strengthening. Last but not the least, Macedonia has a large diaspora and as a result is the recipient of a large number of remittances. Petreski and Jovanovic (2013) estimate that the pure cash transfers entering the economy each year range between 4 and 10% of GDP, outweighing the size of FDI (which is less than 4% of GDP) and totalling between USD 400 million and USD 1 billion. Out of these, it has been estimated that about half originate from the EU, as the largest part of the Macedonian diaspora is based in Germany, Italy, Sweden and other EU Member States. However, the dependence on the EU here is not dominant as with trade and financial flows, since large contingents of Macedonians also live in the United States, Canada, Australia, Switzerland and more recently in Iraq and Afghanistan. Despite these dependencies, it is still estimated that EU membership would bring additional economic benefits for Macedonia. Despite the fact that the major part of tariffs and quotas have already been dismantled (not just because of SAA, but also because of Macedonia’s membership of the WTO) it is expected that the economy could benefit further from the complete opening up of the EU market, in other words the complete merging with the European Common Market. Support in this process could be lent by the nominal convergence the economy achieved due to the pegged denar, as well as by high trade and financial integration with the EU which might strengthen the synchronisation of the business cycles. In addition, the utilisation of EU structural funds might bring faster restructuring of the economy and support for regional development, thereby increasing productivity and competitiveness. Moreover, EU membership may improve the functioning of the institutions through better public governance and lower corruption, although this remains questionable, given the experiences of some new member states (such as

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Bulgaria and Romania), that did not manage to make significant progress in the fight against corruption after they joined the EU. Finally, if EU membership is assumed to bring larger political stability to the country, thereby reducing country risk, then EU membership would bring a higher credit rating for the economy, lower interest rates imposed on the foreign debt, downward pressure onto domestic interest rates, as well as a larger inflow of FDI, which all together would benefit growth, investment, export and public finance.

Large Emigration to Undermine Growth and Development Potentials? The unstable political processes and the exogenous shocks, rendering the achievement of development objectives difficult, also fuelled dissatisfaction with the economy, politics, society and, above all the general well-being in Macedonia; as well as how government is run, and the like, which sparked off a wave of emigration, which has remained steady throughout the entire transition period (Petreski & Petreski, 2015). The official estimates, based on the official records of the Ministry of Interior (MoI), suggest that the official number of Macedonians living abroad was about 140,000 at the end of 2013. However, in the absence of an official census since 2002, this data is largely imprecise. It is commonly estimated that up to 620,000 Macedonians have established themselves abroad (World Bank, 2016), bringing the emigration share to over 25%, of which in the last two decades alone over 200,000 have emigrated for a better life. In the absence of official figures, it is argued that the most recent wave of emigration from Macedonia happened in the aftermath of the fall of the Schengen visa ‘curtain’ in 2009, with a growing rate of at least 0.5% of net population emigrating each year. Destinations for Macedonians continue to be Western countries, such as Scandinavia, the United States, Canada and Australia. Not only do these countries have far higher living standards than Macedonia, but also people have maintained links with members of earlier diasporic waves over the decades who are based in those countries. Furthermore, it is argued that more recent migration involves a considerable number of purely new emigrants, predominantly young persons who leave for jobs or leave for studies abroad but then find a job and do not return. This also suggests that, while former migration mainly included unskilled workers, the main concern related to recent migration

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is that of a ‘brain drain’, or rather the emigration of highly skilled labour, possibly rendering the achievement of domestic development objectives all the more difficult (Petreski et al., 2017). Commensurate with the size of the diaspora, remittances—the money sent back to households left behind—remain large and persistent. Macedonia stands out for the number of private transfers being made. It has ranged between 13 and 21% of GDP. However, the number of workers’ remittances has been estimated at between 4 and 10% of GDP (Petreski & Jovanovic, 2013), still representing a major source of financing of the large and persistent trade deficit, which helps to alleviate development constraints, for example, by reducing poverty and inequality (Petreski & Jovanovic, 2016) and steering the self-employment of young household members (Petreski & Mojsoska-Blazevski, 2015).

Recent Economic Developments Given the large trade and financial exposure of the Macedonian economy towards the economy of the European Union, the business cycles between the two have synchronised to some extent with the passage of time, thereby leading to the almost immediate transmission of any shocks hitting the European Union, and more precisely, the economy of the Eurozone on the Macedonian economy. The Great Recession of 2007 was first felt in Macedonia in the last quarter of 2008, being mainly transmitted through the reduction in exports and the overall reduction of trade (see Chart 5.7). Foreign demand, especially that stemming from the EU dwindled and remained depressed over the subsequent European Sovereign Debt Crisis (since 2010). Contrary to trade, the Macedonian banks remained quite unaffected by the Global Financial Crisis/European Sovereign Debt Crisis due to the predominance of traditional banking activities, conservative lending policies and high capital ratios. However, the period of the Great Recession and the European Sovereign Debt Crisis coincided with increased government spending focused on one sector; construction (Chart 5.9), and the intense government campaign to attract FDI under favourable conditions in the so called technological-industrial development zones. While new factories have been established in the economy, FDIs are still considered to be insufficient vis-à-vis efforts and subsidies spent for their attraction (Chart 5.8).

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70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 -10 -20 -30 2009 2009 2010 2010 2011 2011 2012 2012 2013 2013 2014 2014 2015 2015 2016 Q1 Q3 Q1 Q3 Q1 Q3 Q1 Q3 Q1 Q3 Q1 Q3 Q1 Q3 Q1

Chart 5.9 Annual growth rates of construction (Source State Statistical Office of Macedonia)

All these efforts have to an extent compensated for lost foreign demand, preventing large falls in output that might have been caused by the crisis. In addition, such measures not only prevented job losses, but stimulated the creation of jobs, accompanied by an array of active labour market policies, including the heavy subsidisation of jobs. The unemployment rate has been in constant decline (Chart 5.10), from its peak at above 36% in 2004 to 24% in 2016, representing a record low. On the labour market, however, the main concern remains the large inactivity, especially that of females (Mojsoska-Blazevski et al., 2015; Petreski et al., 2014), as well the high and persistent unemployment rate of youth (Petreski et al., 2017) and their inclination to emigrate. Still, the weakened economy arising from the lingering economic crisis, the structural weaknesses preventing the delivery of sufficiently high growth rates (often argued at being above 6% per year), as well a populist government subsidising jobs, agriculture, culture, as well investing in projects with doubtful net present value, resulted in the swift proliferation of public debt, from about 23% in 2008, to over 50% of GDP in 2016, representing the main economic challenge at present (Chart 5.11).

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36 34 32 30 28 26 24 22 20

Chart 5.10

Unemployment rate (Source State Statistical Office of Macedonia)

In addition to the overall effect of the global economic crisis and the European sovereign crisis impacting on the Macedonian economy, the latter was of further key concern because of Macedonia’s neighbourhood and economic relationships with the most severely hit economy in Europe—Greece. Despite the name dispute that Macedonia has with Greece, economic cooperation with Greece since the economic embargo of 1994 has been expanding. Trade exchange ranks third or fourth place among Macedonia’s trade partners. Despite the decline in Greek FDI into Macedonia in recent years, Greece still remains an important investor in the Macedonian economy. The second-largest bank, the oil refinery, a large concrete factory and other important companies in Macedonia are all Greek owned. However, trade with Greece has been severely hit (Table 5.3), first shortly after the Great Recession, and second, after 2012 until the present, when Greece encountered major liquidity problems and a potential exit from the common currency.

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55 50 45 40 35 30 25 20 200220032004200520062007200820092010201120122013201420152016 2016 2016 Q1 Q2 Q3

Chart 5.11

Public debt (Source Ministry of Finance of Macedonia)

Still, while many believed that the riskier channel for the contagion of the Greek crisis was the banking sector, this was precluded through Greek-owned banks being regulated by domestic jurisdiction, which prevented direct withdrawal of the company’s capital except through open sale. Still, to further shield the economy, the National bank of Macedonia disallowed other transactions to be conducted until the crisis has been resolved and the Greek economy stabilised.

Table 5.3 Trade volume with Greece (% of total trade)

Trade share with Greece

Trade share with Greece

2005 (%)

2006 (%)

2007 (%)

2008 (%)

2009 (%)

11.6

10.8

9.7

9.6

9.4

2010 (%)

2011 (%)

2012 (%)

2013 (%)

2014 (%)

7.9

6.8

9.4

8.4

7.3

Source State Statistical Office of Macedonia

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References Daskalov, S., Petkovski, M., Petrevski, G., & Biljanoska, J. (2003, April). Country study: FYR Macedonia. In Trade policies and institutions in the countries of South Eastern Europe in the EU stabilisation and association process—Background country studies (pp. 109–146). Document of the World Bank. The World Bank. ISAM, Insurance Supervision Agency of Macedonia. (2014). Annual report 2014 of the Insurance Supervision Agency of Macedonia. Available at: https:// www.aso.mk/dokument/izvestai/godisni/Godisen%20izvestai%20za%20paza rot%20na%20osiguruvaje%202013%20finalen%2020.06.2014.pdf (Accessed on 12 July 2015). Jovanovic, B., & Jovanovic, B. (2015). Ease of doing business and FDI in the ex-socialist countries. National Bank of the Republic of Macedonia (mimeo). Jovanovic, B., & Petreski, M. (2012). Monetary policy in small open economy with fixed exchange rate: The case of Macedonia. Economic Systems, 36(4), 594–608. Jovanovic, B., & Petreski, M. (2014). Monetary policy, exchange rates and labor unions in SEE and the CIS during the financial crisis. Economic Systems, 38(3), 309–332. Mojsoska-Blazevski, N., Petreski, M., & Petreska, D. (2015). Increasing labour market activity of poor, females and informal workers: Let’s make work pay in Macedonia. Eastern European Economics, 53(6), 466–490. Petreski, M. (2013a). Monetary policy conduct in CESEE countries on their road to the Euro. Comparative Economic Studies, 55(1), 1–41. Petreski, M. (2013b). South East European trade analysis: A role for endogenous CEFTA-2006? Emerging Markets Finance and Trade, 49(5), 26–44. Petreski, M., & Jovanovic, B. (Eds.). (2013). Remittances and development in the Western Balkans: The cases of Macedonia, Kosovo and Bosnia-Herzegovina. Scholars’ Press. Petreski, M., & Jovanovic, B. (2016). Do remittances reduce poverty and inequality in the Western Balkans? Evidence from Macedonia? In J. Dahinden, A. Efendic, & M. Zbinden (Eds.), Diversity of migration in South East Europe (pp. 85–109). Fribourg, RRPP Joint Volume. Petreski, M., & Mojsoska-Blazevski, N. (2015). Youth self-employment in households receiving remittances in Macedonia. Czech Journal of Economics and Finance, 65(6), 499–523. Petreski, M., Mojsoska-Blazevski, N., & Bergolo, M. (2017). Labor-market scars when youth unemployment is extremely high: Evidence from Macedonia. Eastern European Economics, 55(2), 168–196. Petreski, M., Mojsoska-Blazevski, N., & Petreski, B. (2014). Gender wage gap when women are highly inactive: Evidence from repeated imputations with Macedonian data. Journal of Labor Research, 35(4), 393–411.

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Petreski, M., & Petreski, B. (2015). Dissatisfied, feeling unequal and inclined to emigrate: Perceptions from Macedonia in a MIMIC model. Migration Letters, 12(2), 152–161. Petreski, M., Petreski, B., & Tumanoska, D. (2017). Remittances as a shield to socially-vulnerable households in Macedonia: The case when the instrument is not strictly exogenous. International Migration, 55(1), 20–36. Petrevski, G. (2005). Macedonia: A decade of stabilisation policy. South East Europe Review for Labour and Social Affairs, 8(1), 97–116. Petroski, A. (1998). The privatisation concept in the Republic of Macedonia and the achieved results. In G. Fotev & J. Jakimovski (Eds.), Social stratification in Bulgaria and Macedonia (pp. 72–80). Fridrich Ebert. Štiblar, F. (2013). Economic growth and development in post Yugoslav countries. Wilson Center. Velickovski, I., Petreski, M., & Jovanovic, B. (2016). The Macedonian economy and the European Union. In L. Briguglio (Ed.), Small states and the European Union (pp. 153–183). Routledge. World Bank. (2016). World Bank data on North Macedonia. https://data.wor ldbank.org/country/north-macedonia

CHAPTER 6

Privatisation in Macedonia and Communities in Transition Hyrije Abazi-Alili

Following the generally successful experience of developed economies, privatisation also spread to the former socialist countries by the beginning of the 1990s. By that time, the Yugoslav leaders had already reached the conclusion that the decentralised socialist system in Yugoslavia had shown itself to be unsuccessful and inefficient and had proposed privatisation as one of the solutions to their enterprises’ problems. Being one of the six republics of former Yugoslavia, Macedonia started its privatisation process initially in 1989 with the Law on Social Capital. Thus, the ownership transformation of the socially owned companies (SOEs) in Macedonia has been characterised by two waves of privatisation, firstly under Yugoslav law and then under a new privatisation law after the independence of Macedonia (1991).

H. Abazi-Alili (B) Faculty of Business and Economics, South East European University, Tetovo, North Macedonia

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 R. Hudson and I. Dodovski (eds.), Macedonia’s Long Transition, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-20773-0_5

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The Law on Socially Owned Capital (Markovic´ Law, 1989) The government of the then Yugoslav Prime Minister Ante Markovi´c developed a combination of bottom-up and top-down approaches to privatisation. The specific feature of the socialist system in Yugoslavia was the concept of social ownership and the socialist self-management system. Enterprises belonged to Yugoslav ‘society’ and were left in trust with their employees who were the principal beneficiaries of the enterprise operations. The management of the companies was entrusted to the employees, and all the important business decisions, including the selection of directors, were decentralised to the level of enterprise and were made by workers’ councils with minimum intervention by the state. Market socialism, with a generally uncontrolled goods market, had replaced the central planning mechanism common in Soviet-type economies. By comparison with other transition countries, the republics emerging from Yugoslavia had a distinct and specific type of property rights (social ownership as opposed to state ownership) which affected their course of privatisation—and indeed even their transition strategies. Because capital was owned by society as a whole, it was difficult to identify the actual owners (who benefited directly from the operation of enterprises and who would look after the social capital). Employees acted as de facto owners because they were the direct beneficiaries of the enterprises. The concept of workers’ self-management made the workers believe that they were the owners of enterprises, which posed a problem for the Government at the time of privatisation. The Law on Socially Owned Capital introduced the corporatisation of the enterprises and their privatisation through the sale of internal shares. This meant that the enterprise could be partially privatised to their employees through the sale of shares to them, at a discount with payments made over ten years. This implies that the policy was based on ‘privatisation by sale’ with a strong role for employees. The remaining shares could be sold to anybody from outside the enterprise, but not at a discount. To solve the issue of who would be the final beneficiary of the revenues collected from the sale of shares, all former Yugoslav republics established Development Funds that received funds from privatisation intended to be used for future development purposes.

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In the period between 1990 and 1991, under the Markovi´c Law, over 600 enterprises in Macedonia started their transformation into joint-stock or limited liability companies. Because of many deficiencies, the privatisation process resulted in managers accumulating the bulk of enterprise shares privatised in the period. These deficiencies were: (i) the lack of a control mechanism over the enterprise transformation process; (ii) the lack of supervision over the remaining part of social capital; (iii) the valuation of shares at their book values through the following methods: net assets, or adjusted book value, discounted cash flow, price/earnings, comparable enterprises and others (which, in times of hyperinflation, resulted in an enormous erosion of the value of the social capital); (iv) the possibility of fictitiously increasing their salaries in order to obtain a larger number of shares1 ; (v) very favourable payment conditions—a discount of 30%, which was enhanced by another 1% for each year of employment, thus the overall discount could be as high as 70% of the nominal value of the shares; each employee could buy shares at a nominal value up to three times their annual personal incomes including a payment period of up to ten years—which resulted in only a negligible sum of money being paid into the development funds. In Macedonia, an audit by the official supervisory institutions was needed to recognise the full or partial privatisation of some 600 enterprises that had begun the transformation of socially owned companies into joint-stock companies or limited liability companies according to the Markovi´c Law. Given the many deficiencies of the privatisation concept according to the Markovi´c Law outlined above, out of 600 enterprises which started privatisation only 66 large and medium enterprises managed to complete the privatisation process according to this law whereas the others—mainly large enterprises—were only partially privatised (IMF, 1998; Koman & Markovska, 2007).

The Law on the Transformation of Enterprises with Social Capital (1993) In June 1993, two years after Macedonia’s independence, the new Law on the Transformation of Enterprises with Social Capital2 was passed and the second stage of privatisation was ushered in. The Government chose the ‘case by case’ method of privatisation and the principle of ‘privatisation for revenue’ (Klusev et al., 2002).3 According to Article 6 of this law:

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‘The privatisation of the state capital of enterprises is decided upon by the Government of the Republic of Macedonia, on a case by case basis’. The privatisation process became a highly politicised issue in Macedonia. Together with its method, privatisation was one of the most prominent elements of the programmes of all political parties before the elections in 1994. The new political party, the Democratic Party, led by Petar Goshev, strongly disagreed with the Government’s choice and promoted mass privatisation. They believed that the government had used a variety of strategies to convince enterprises that the method chosen by the government was in their best interest. Accordingly, they criticised the extreme stories about the disadvantages of mass privatisation in Russia and the Czech Republic, published in the newspapers at the time, such as selling enterprises for ‘one bottle of vodka’ (Klusev et al., 2002). The Government’s choice was of course based on the generally accepted principle that commitment comes when someone pays with his own money to become the owner of shares. Higher efficiency in a company can be achieved only with dominant and interested owners, who care for, and who are committed to preserve and increase the value of their shares in the company. The expectation was that the case-by-case method of privatisation and the committed new owners would influence management and lead to improvements in efficiency. At the same time, the funds collected from the sale of shares could be used to enhance the operation of the overall economy (Jovanovska et al., 2002). Apart from efficiency gains, which were the primary objective of the privatisation process, there were also other objectives: ● ● ● ● ●

to attract foreign capital, to start the economy moving at a more stable pace, to develop the capital market, to de-freeze the so-called frozen savings deposits,4 to activate citizens’ savings which were kept outside the banking system (Sukarov & Markovska, 1995).

The chosen method was a bottom-up approach, where the decision for privatisation and the choice of the specific method were left to the enterprises themselves.

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In order to facilitate, support and coordinate the administration of the privatisation process, the Macedonian Privatisation Agency was established in October 1993 to oversee the implementation of the privatisation Law and to handle the sale of shares of companies in the privatisation process. As an incentive to improve the acceptance of this process, and at the same time, in order to provide for some fairness in the process, the Law provided for the following: ● The employees were granted a generous scheme of discounts. They had an initial discount of 30% plus 1% for each year of service in the enterprise. For the assets, which had been built with so-called common consumption assets, most of them being workers’ resorts, or workers’ restaurants, the initial discount was 50% plus 1% for each year of service in the enterprise, so that the maximum individual discount could be as high as 90% (for a person who had forty years of service). Employees could buy shares with discount up to a maximum of 25,000 German Marks and the total number of shares purchased with discount could not be higher than 30% of all the enterprise shares. These discounts were offered after some negotiations between the Government and the Trade Unions thereby presenting very favourable conditions for the employees.5 On the other hand, one can notice the similarity of this law with the Markovi´c Law, indicating that not much had been added to deal with the weaknesses of the previous law. ● At the beginning of the privatisation procedure, the enterprise had to automatically transfer 15% of social capital (in the form of shares or stakes) to the State Pension Fund. This way, the Fund would be capitalised with a large number of shares. These were non-voting preferential shares with the right to 2% dividend. The expectation was that this would significantly improve the financial standing of the Fund, especially when the capital market became more liquid. ● Up to 55% of the appraised value of the enterprise (in the form of ordinary shares) could be sold to domestic and foreign investors, under the same conditions.6

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With the method chosen to privatise the enterprises in Macedonia, all the employees were owners of the shares, which resulted in dispersed ownership. The employees owning 1–2% in value of the enterprises were not very interested in managing the company. Thus, the right for managing the companies was given to the so-called ‘management group’. These management groups consisted of three to five managers who then started to be interested in increasing their shares in the company so that the managers had enough finance to buy the shares from the employees; they were offered the opportunity to (i) de-freeze the so-called frozen savings deposits, and also to (ii) use bank loans by putting the enterprise under mortgage. Hence, they started to convince (sometimes by force) the employees to sell their shares to the managers. One can notice that it was an easy way for the management groups to become the owners of a company. Additionally, because social enterprises were characterised by redundancy, the new owners also fired employees. This resulted in discontent among the employees who (after selling their shares) started to feel cheated, or in a way misused, thus during this period, there were a lot of protests by employees in Macedonia. Today, the privatisation method in Macedonia is considered to have been a ‘criminal way of introducing privatisation’. A major drawback in the process (as would become obvious later on) was that the chosen method favoured the ‘insiders’, the ones who were already employed in enterprises. This particular method also meant that the ethnic Albanian population did not benefit from privatisation to the same extent as the ethnic Macedonian population. There were at least two reasons for this: they were generally under-represented in managerial positions, and they accounted for a smaller share of employment than the rest of the population. Therefore, the number of shares they received as employees was relatively small. Manipulation by management, the pressure put on the employees after privatisation, and their ignorance and lack of knowledge about shares meant that the participation of ethnic Albanian citizens in the privatisation process was quite limited. At the same time, it should also be mentioned that the ethnic Albanian population were less concerned with privatisation and less aware of the potential benefits of the change of ownership and, therefore, did not actively participate in the privatisation process.7 Another drawback of the privatisation methods most frequently employed by enterprises was that it allowed only a modest inflow of foreign investment. There was no large-scale interest by foreign investors

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because of the political instability in the region during the privatisation process. Furthermore, Macedonia was relatively unknown to foreign investors, because at the time, it did not have a distinguished, recognisable campaign for attracting foreign investments. Given that one of the objectives of privatisation was to attract foreign capital in order to increase the efficiency of the newly privatised enterprises, this unintended consequence was particularly important. According to the data of the Privatisation Agency, the total foreign investment inflow through the privatisation process was only 1.5 billion euros, which is around 750 euros per inhabitant, and one should indicate that this was a lower level of investment in comparison with other transition economies.

The Privatisation Models The Law on Transformation envisaged several models for transformation depending on the size of the enterprise: the purchase of the enterprise by employees, the simple sale of parts of an enterprise to employees or to outsiders, the sale of an enterprise to persons that take over the management, issuing shares in return for additional investment in the company, the leasing of an enterprise followed by its purchase after some years and the transformation of an enterprise through the bankruptcy process. Enterprises were free to select the specific method of privatisation from the models offered by law. Another step in the process was the appraisal of the value of the enterprise performed by authorised appraisers, which was intended to provide an accurate estimate of the value of the capital in the absence of a market, which the Agency expected to receive for the enterprise. In addition to the privatisation of commercial companies that were subject to the Privatisation Law, there were other privatisations to be conducted by ministries directly, without the interference of the Privatisation Agency (the so-called ‘strategic enterprises’) which started at a later stage. These were the utility companies such as the telecommunication companies, electricity distribution companies and financial institutions. During the 2000s and especially after 2006, the Government launched an intensive investment promotion campaign to invite foreign investors, mainly green-field investors in Technological and Investment Development Zones. The Privatisation Agency stopped operating in 2005 and the

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assets, remaining responsibilities and most of the employees were transferred to the Ministry of Economy, the Ministry of Finance, the Pension Fund and the Agency for Public Housing. When the Privatisation Agency was dissolved in 2005, 1,690 enterprises with more than 230,000 employees and a value of 2.3 billion Euros had been privatised (Miljovski et al., 2006). Table 6.1 presents the number of privatised companies according to their method of privatisation at the end of each year starting from 1995 to 2003. The most popular methods of privatisation were employee buy-out (EBO) and management buy-out (MBO). Uzunov (1997) provides interesting data on the number of shareholders of companies privatised by the MBO technique until 1996 (when the process had still not been completed), and according to him, only 15% of this group of enterprises transferred their ownership to less than 10 owners, and 29% had their shares transferred to large numbers of shareholders, in other words 200–500 people.

The Evolution of Ownership Structure After Privatisation Soon after the first round, or primary privatisation, which was often of a very administrative nature, many enterprises experienced further changes in ownership which were due to rapidly changing environmental conditions and their performance. The evolution of ownership structures has been examined through two approaches: (i) secondary privatisation and (ii) governance cycles. While most transition economy governments used mass privatisation as their main methods of privatisation, the expectation was that this initial ownership form would eventually be replaced by a more effective type of ownership through secondary privatisation. Although in many countries the initial privatisation resulted in large insider ownership, it has been shown that, over time, outside ownership (external domestic or foreign ownership) has become the norm.

The Progress of the Privatisation Process on the Transition Period in Macedonia Ownership data collected from the ‘Central Securities Depository AD Skopje’ for 213 companies for 2001–2010 (with missing data for the year

2008

2007

2006

2005

2004

19.6

111

176 52.1

19.1

110

176 51.9

19.7

108

173 49.2

18.9

99

165 49.2

18

104

166 47.7

17.9

46.3

75

1388

2003

19.1

42.3

Mean shareholding No of companies Mean shareholding No of companies Mean shareholding No of companies Mean shareholding No of companies Mean shareholding No of companies Mean shareholding No of companies Mean shareholding

2001

2nd Largest owner

1st Largest owner

12.5

78

12

72

12.2

67

12.1

61

11.8

65

10.9

33

9.6

3rd Largest owner

7.8

44

8

38

7.6

34

7.6

26

8.9

24

8.5

15

7.1

4th Largest owner

6.3

21

6.2

17

6.2

16

6.4

15

6.4

13

6.5

6

6.1

5th Largest owner

Average shareholding of largest seven shareholders owning more than 5% of shares

Year

Table 6.1

6.3

6

6.5

6

6.2

7

6.2

5

6.9

6

6.5

3

6.1

6th Largest owner

PRIVATISATION IN MACEDONIA AND COMMUNITIES …

(continued)

5.7

3

5.8

4

5.9

4

5.9

4

5.9

4

6.2

5

6

7th Largest owner

6

103

No of companies Mean shareholding No of companies Mean shareholding No of companies Mean shareholding No of companies in years

(continued)

19.2 945

1523

115

175 49.7

19.8

112

176 52.8

20.1

111

2nd Largest owner

52.7

176

1st Largest owner

614

12.1

79

12.9

79

12.7

80

3rd Largest owner

319

7.9

46

7.9

45

7.9

47

4th Largest owner

143

6.4

18

6.6

18

6.5

19

5th Largest owner

59

6.3

10

6.3

8

6.3

8

6th Largest owner

Source Authors’ calculations, based on data from Central Securities Depository Office, AD Skopje—Republic of Macedonia

Total: 2001–2010

2010

2009

Year

Table 6.1

33

5.9

2

5.5

3

5.7

3

7th Largest owner

104 H. ABAZI-ALILI

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2002) are employed to trace what has happened inside a group of privatised firms chosen at random, as well as data from the balance sheets of the companies for 2001–2009. In this section, we provide a statistical overview of the changes in the ownership structure of privatised firms in Macedonia. The statistics on the dynamics of the ownership data as the percentage shareholding of all shareholders owning more than 5% of shares are presented in Table 6.1. Data is provided for the largest shareholders, from the first to the seventh. Table 6.1 shows that over a period of ten years, the average percentage of shares owned by the largest owner has increased by 20% (from 42 to 53%), indicating that the concentration of ownership has increased during the period under consideration. This is also noticed from the decrease in the number of firms with the seventh owner; in other words, fewer companies have a seventh owner (owning more than 5%) meaning that the smaller owners have disappeared over time.9 We follow Kocenda et al. (2011), and a group of different types of ownership concentrated into four categories, creating two types of majority control and two types of minority groups: the first majority category is the absolute dominance of the first largest owner with the others owning less than 10%; in other words, no other significant owners. The second category reflects a monitored dominant majority owner in which there is a dominant owner (owning more than 50% of shares) but there are also other significant owners (owning at least 10% of shares), thus the dominant owner is monitored by at least one other owner that has more than 10% of shares. The first minority category is combined controlling minority with two (or three) owners that together own more than 50% of shares. The last category, dispersed ownership, represents a situation in which none of the shareholders owns more than 10% of shares. Table 6.2 presents the performance of firms (average labour productivity) in different ownership concentration categories over the years. The data shown in Table 6.2 indicates that the absolute dominance category of ownership performs slightly better than the other ownership concentration categories, with its peak achieved in 2008 (average productivity of 4.62 million denars per employee). By investigating empirically the ownership-performance relationship, Abazi-Alili (2013) provides evidence to support the presence of a significant positive relationship in privatised firms in Macedonia. The results also indicate that in Macedonia the ownership structure, be it diffused or concentrated, is impacted on by innovation activities, the nationality of owners and

17 2.08 28 1.39 24 1.63 27 1.83 29 3.04 28 3.41 26

30 1.96 48 2.17 53 2.99 55 3.44 57 3.96 59 4.62 62

2008

2007

2006

2005

2004

2003

1.69

2.13

Average Productivity No of companies Average Productivity No of companies Average Productivity No of companies Average Productivity No of companies Average Productivity No of companies Average Productivity No of companies Average Productivity No of companies

2001

Monitored dominance

Absolute dominance

70

70 2.45

66 2.79

63 2.38

54 1.75

56 1.97

42 1.61

1.48

Jointly controlling minority

6

6 1.90

9 1.89

13 3.37

13 2.19

17 2.44

16 3.99

2.53

Dispersed ownership

11

11 2.67

11 2.57

11 1.89

17 1.19

13 1.39

30 1.53

1.28

Other

175

174 3.36

172 3.18

169 2.66

161 2.13

162 1.93

135 2.04

1.73

Total

Average labour productivity by ownership concentration category in years (in million denars per employee)

Year

Table 6.2

106 H. ABAZI-ALILI

27 2.22 206

62 3.18 426

2001–2009

2.48

3.22

Average Productivity No of companies Average Productivity No of companies

2009

Monitored dominance

Absolute dominance

Year

491

70 2.09

2.96

Jointly controlling minority

86

6 2.70

1.79

Dispersed ownership

113

9 1.75

2.66

Other

1322

174 2.47

2.52

Total

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other firm characteristics. Furthermore, being concerned with the impact of innovation activities on ownership structure and firm productivity, results indicate that the innovation activities undertaken by firms after privatisation are significant factors (Abazi-Alili, 2013).

Conclusion After considering the overall privatisation process in Macedonia, one can come to the following conclusions: i. the transformation of enterprises with social capital has been successfully finished; ii. the primary method of privatisation has been the transfer of ownership to ‘insiders’; iii. the chosen method of privatisation did not help to develop the capital market and left the participation of ethnic Albanians in the privatisation schemes quite limited; iv. foreign direct investment (foreign ownership) was mainly attracted through the privatisation of ‘strategic enterprises’; v. the ownership structure of enterprises has become more concentrated over time; and, vi. more concentrated owners (absolute dominance) perform better than other concentration categories.

Notes 1. During the hyperinflationary (four-digit) period, the employees’ salaries were increased, and a part of the increase was used to provide the employees with shares. Because share prices did not increase with inflation, employees were able to acquire much higher shares than under normal conditions. 2. As explained earlier, the enterprises of the former Yugoslav republics were characterised by social ownership. That is why the law is called ‘The Law on the Transformation of Enterprises with Social Capital’ instead of the ‘Privatisation Law’. 3. There are other studies written during the 1990s, which mainly review the privatisation process, such as Sukarov and Markovska (1995), Suklev (1996), Slaveski (1997) and other papers which mainly refer to the annual reports prepared by the Privatisation Agency.

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4. Macedonian citizens had frozen savings deposit accounts from the time of the break-up of former Yugoslavia. The payment for the shares of the company with the so-called frozen deposits was one of the ways the government could reduce the debt to citizens. 58% of the value of each person’s deposits could be used for buying shares of companies. 5. These negotiations were held in the summer of 1995 and they ended with several decisions favourable to the employees and the Trade Unions: the payment for 30% of the shares bought with discount could be made in five instalments, without an initial down payment and with two years of grace period. The Board of Directors of the Agency and the Government’s Privatisation Commission were enlarged with one representative from the Unions. It should be noted that after this, the privatisation process was embraced by Unions and employees who were involved in all the discussions on privatisation. 6. If there were shares not purchased by employees, they would be processed as shares for public sales and could be sold with the other shares (a Privatisation Agency was in charge of their sale). As such, these shares would remain as social capital and could be sold to other buyers. However, such cases were rather rare because there were no unsold shares left with such favourable conditions (explained in the text). 7. Because of the fact that the ethnic Albanian population in Macedonia had faced obstacles in many areas, especially in getting a proper education and employment, many had opted for emigration. Those who were left behind received an income from remittances and thus were not much interested in the privatisation process. Another part of ethnic Albanian population was engaged in private small land holdings and agriculture. Very few of them understood what the concept of shares was and showed little interest in them. 8. The number of observations (number of companies) has increased over the years because the Central Securities Depository Office has reported data for additional privatised companies that have reported their ownership structure over the years. 9. The number of companies in the second column of the table (1st Largest Owner) increases over time because there were fewer privatised companies in earlier years.

References Abazi-Alili, H. (2013). The evolution of ownership, innovation and firm performance: Empirical evidence from Macedonia. Dubrovnik International Economic Meeting (Vol. 1). http://hrcak.srce.hr/161447

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IMF. (1998). Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia: Recent economic developments. IMF Staff Country Report No. 98/82, Washington, D.C. Jovanovska, M., Belogaska, E., & Sanoski, S. (2002). Privatisation and restructuring of the socially and state owned enterprises in the Republic Macedonia and its implications on corporate governance (Privatisation Agency of the Republic of Macedonia Report). http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/39/2/2394769.pdf. Accessed 31 January 2011. Klusev, N., Fiti, T., Petkovski, M., Slaveski, T., & Filipovski, V. (2002). Ekonomijata na Makedonija vo tranzicija. Macedonian Academy of Sciences and Arts. Kocenda, E., Hanousek, J., & Masika, M. (2011). Financial efficiency and the ownership of Czech firms (William Davidson Institute Working Paper No. 1016). https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1912069 Koman, M., & Hadji Vasileva Markovska, V. (2007). Transition firms in Illyria: Do workers still manage? Evidence from Macedonian firms. Economic and Business Review, 9(1), 23–45. Miljovski, J., Stojkov, A., & Hadji Vasileva Markovska, V. (2006). Privatisation in the Republic of Macedonia: Five years after (Working paper). Skopje. Slaveski, T. (1997). Privatisation in the Republic of Macedonia: Five years after. Eastern European Economics, 35(1), 31–51. Statistical Yearbook of Yugoslavia. (1987). Savezni zavod za statistiku. Sukarov, M., & Hadji Vasileva Markovska, V. (1995). Privatisation in Macedonia—1995. CEEPN. Suklev, B. (1996). Privatisation in the Republic of Macedonia. Eastern European Economics, 34(6), 5–17. Uzunov, V. (1997). Economic transition in Macedonia. CEEPN.

CHAPTER 7

Political Parties and the Trials of Democracy Nenad Markovikj

The third wave of democracy arrived in Europe in the late 1980s and the early 1990s introducing pluralism and multiparty systems. Macedonia, as a country that seceded from the former Yugoslavia, was no exception to this process, introducing multiparty democracy after the independence referendum in 1991. In its evolutionary path, Macedonia changed three electoral models of parliamentary elections, in an attempt to find the most appropriate electoral system that would be suitable for all the objective political constellations. In this process, it developed from a majoritarian to a mixed model, ending with a proportional electoral model and later on, including the diaspora in the voting process. However, no matter what the features of the electoral and political system of the country, it seems that contentious politics in the country remains the main modality of functioning in the political arena. Even more so, certain democratic indicators connected to the quality of democracy in the country have worsened over time, and democratic progress is slower than ever, if even existent. This article will provide insight into

N. Markovikj (B) Political Science Department, Sts. Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje (UKIM), Skopje, North Macedonia

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 R. Hudson and I. Dodovski (eds.), Macedonia’s Long Transition, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-20773-0_6

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the reasons for the inability of the political parties to achieve a common democratic, internalized and institutionally framed political process, by focusing on several factors. Intra-party democracy seems to be the fundamental shortcoming that later, combined with the specificities of Macedonian political culture, provides for a fundamentally malicious mix of public distrust and the clientelistic behaviour of both the political elites and the electorate. The absence of factions, the predominant position of the party elite and the party in office, as well the sultanistic position of the leader within the party structure, provides the way for undemocratic practices transferred into the political arena. The partitocracy and political clientelism are just the fundamental problem of the whole system of power within the parties, but they also reflect on society as a practice of governing society in general, while maintaining power through the exchange of public positions and resources for the votes of both the electorate inside the parties and the electorate in the elections. Political culture on the other hand, places Macedonia among that group of societies with very low public trust and weak social capital, which additionally stimulates the partocratic and manipulative manner in which politics functions. This leads to high levels of political discord among the political actors, that ever since the independence of the Macedonian state, have not been able to find solutions to major political crises without the mediation or direct intervention of the international community. The inability to internalize the political process breeds a whole new phenomenon through which politics is being managed. Weak institutional trust as well as the inability to manage political processes within the given institutional framework, stimulates both domestic and international political factors to displace politics outside the legal field into the field of informality, as a para-political sphere in which resolving political crises come down to negotiations between the leaders of political parties, so that once a solution has been reached, they will channel the outcomes of political negotiations through legal channels. Leaders’ meetings serve both as a replacement for weak institutions and also as a main format for bridging political mistrust, expressed in frequent political dead ends, that supersede the ethnic aspect and occur on many other social lines.

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The Evolution of the Macedonian Political Party System The evolutionary path of the Macedonian political party system within the independent Macedonian state started with the adoption of the new Constitution of the Republic of Macedonia on 8 September 1991, preceded by a successful referendum that indicated a virtually unanimous will of the people to break away from the Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia. The new Constitution founded the Republic of Macedonia as a sovereign state of the Macedonian people and the members of other ethnic groups living on its territory, with a pretty standard set of human rights and basic freedoms defined within its constitutional boundaries. Political pluralism, as one of the biggest ideological turns for Macedonian society after half a century of socialist monopartism, was guaranteed in the fundamental values of the new Constitution (Constitution of the Republic of Macedonia, 1991, Article 8—line 5) alongside the division of powers (Article 8—line 3) and rule of law (Article 8—line 2). These three fundamental values of the constitution symbolically represent an ideological trinity within whose borders the Macedonian political party system should have developed. This ideological component was accompanied by the freedom of association (ibid., Article 20) in accomplishing and protecting citizens’ political, social, economic, cultural and other rights and beliefs, that provided for the constitutional base for the free formation of citizens’ associations and political parties, which were stipulated further by law. The development of the Macedonian electoral system went through three stages: – The first stage, implemented ever since independence and the first plural elections in 1990, was marked by the two-round majoritarian model of elections until 1998, whereby the Republic of Macedonia was divided into 120 electoral units each providing one single mandate in the Parliament (Dimeski, 2014, pp. 22–23). After the first round, the two candidates with the most votes would progress into the second round of elections. In the second round, the candidate with the most votes would have been considered to have been elected as an MP.

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– The second model was the so-called ‘mixed’ model that practically emerged as a transitory modality towards the purely proportional model. This model was effectively implemented only once, during parliamentary elections in Macedonia in 1998, where 85 MPs were elected on the majoritarian model, and 35 were elected on proportional lists (Law on Election of MPs, 1998, p. 1369). – The third model, currently implemented in the country, was the proportional model whereby Macedonia was divided into six electoral units, with a closely even number of voters (Law on Election of MPs, 2002, p. 1). Every unit elects 20 MPs, based on the D’Hondt’s formula. The model was introduced in 2002, after the ethnic conflict in 2001, mainly to avoid ethnic contestation in small electoral units between ethnic Macedonians and ethnic Albanians, as well as to avoid influences by informal power figures at a local level. One additional element in the Macedonian electoral system was introduced in 2011 when diaspora voting was introduced. In addition to the six electoral units, three more were added, whereas the seventh electoral unit included Europe and Africa, the eighth included North and South America and the ninth electoral unit covered voters from Australia and Asia (Electoral Code of RM, 2011, p. 3). Each of these units elects one MP who has a guaranteed seat in the Macedonian Parliament, meaning that the electoral composition of the Macedonian Parliament increased from 120 to 123 MPs. In 2016, as a result of the continuing political crisis, diaspora voting has undergone legislative changes, whereas in order to get one MP, each electoral unit outside the country has to win more votes than the last placed candidate in the electoral unit that has the smallest turnout in the country. The ideological profiling of the political parties in Macedonia, especially in the Macedonian ethnic block, occurred on the fundamentally divisive societal line of communism and anti-communism. The successors of the communist regime united under the banner of the political left and their most dominant representative the Social Democratic Union of Macedonia (SDSM). The opposing block in the Macedonian ethnic corpus is represented by VMRO-DPMNE, a political party of conservative, Christian Democratic orientation, with strong anti-communist rhetoric and sentiment. In the Albanian block, the most dominant party is the Democratic Union for Integration (DUI), a party derived from

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Albanian rebel structures from 2001, declaring itself to be of left political orientation. The second most powerful party is the Democratic Party of Albanians (DPA), a party of right orientation, mostly addressing the urban Albanian population. Smaller parties include the Liberal-democratic party (LDP), the Party or Democratic Prosperity (PDP), the Socialist party (SP), the Liberal party (LP), the National democratic party (NDP), the New Social-democratic party (NSDP), the VMRO-Narodna party (VMRO-NP), as well as the recently formed BESA, Levica (the Left) and FRODEM. If one considers the overall number of Macedonian parties that exist and have been registered, then one could say that the Macedonian political system is extremely pluralistic or even atomistic (Siljanovska, 2005, p. 27). However, if one takes into consideration who forms the government, then Macedonia is a system of ‘two and a half parties’ (ibid.) where government coalitions are usually formed by the winner of the Macedonian ethnic block and the winner of the Albanian ethnic block,1 with the usual participation of smaller satellite parties. Regardless of ethnic affiliation and ideological orientation, it seems that all parties in the Republic of Macedonia share one similarity—a very limited capacity for intra-party democracy.

The Challenge of Intra-Party Democracy in Macedonia Analysing intra-party democracy in the Macedonian case requires a general definition on what the term means exactly and what criteria are to be considered when measuring it. Academic literature on political parties and political party systems offers a variety of definitions on intra-party democracy, whereas the main focus is on internal democratic procedures and democratic accountability of the leadership towards its members. For Maiyo, intra-party democracy is: ‘an element of participatory democracy, encouraging a culture of democratic debate and the deliberation of critical issues and therefore the collective ownership of decisions; promoting party unity through reduced factionalism and/or fragmentation; creating legitimate internal conflict management systems and reducing the opportunistic and arbitrary use of delegated authority’ (Maiyo, 2008, p. 6). Other scholars have different approaches to intra-party democracy; however, its constitutive elements remain centred

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around accountability, deliberation, the possibilities of bottom-up influence and constitutional limitations on power to the ‘upper management’ of parties. Scarrow places emphasis on a ‘wide range of methods for including party members in intra-party deliberation and decision-making’ (Scarrow, 2005, p. 3). Maravall’s standpoint on vertical intra-party democracy underlines that ‘a party is democratic when it is internally accountable: that is, when members have information about their leaders’ actions and can throw them out of party office’ (Maravall, 2003, p. 2). Notwithstanding that, polycentric, horizontal accountability is of no lesser importance for intra-party democracy meaning a developed system of checks and balances for controlling the power of the party elite, especially during periods of governing the country (ibid.). Intra-party democracy is a fundamental concept for modern political parties, especially because of one of their basic functions which is to distribute resources once in power as well as to appoint candidates to public office, which again is in a tight relationship with resource distribution. In this regard, the concept of party patronage needs some brief clarification due to the fact that both in developed and developing democracies, party patronage is the basic reward mechanism for party members but can also serve as a practical modality for state capture and electoral vote buying. If one takes as a given that a ‘monolithic party allocates a given public budget across localities to maximize the sum of the probabilities of winning’ (Persico et al., 2011, p. 244), then it is clear that party patronage, not taken exclusively as a pejorative term, is the main mechanism through which resource allocation takes place. In this sense, party patronage is best defined as: the ‘power of a party or parties to appoint people to positions in public and semi-public life; and the scope of the patronage is then considered to be the range of positions so distributed’ (Kopecky & Mair, 2011, p. 1). In the case of Macedonia, and the region of Southeastern Europe as a whole, this is of utter importance, mostly because of the frequent and massive abuses of party patronage for the power maintenance of political elites, which only adds to the undemocratic character of political parties. However, in order to claim that political parties in a given case have an undemocratic character, one needs clear criteria according to which intraparty democracy can be measured. Criteria differ, although most scholars in the field revolve around more or less the same substance. For instance, Scarrow defines four crucial areas of measuring intra-party democracy: (1) implementing intra-party democracy; (2) the selection of candidates;

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(3) the selection of leaders and (4) setting party policies (Scarrow, 2005, ˇ pp. 5–10). In Cular’s model for measuring intra-party democracy, two dimensions define the model: 1. The first dimension refers to vertical power sharing, that is to the autonomy of different party units, whether or not members or local branches, and the measures of the extent to which the ‘party on the ground’ can freely act and influence decision-making processes at different party levels. 2. The second dimension could be called the participatory dimension or the dimension of inclusion. It refers to the horizontal aspect of organization, the measure of how many members the decisionmaking process includes and compares the prerogatives allocated to wider party bodies with those given to the narrower circle of ˇ 2004, p. 35). leadership (Cular, ˇ In the first dimension, Cular (2004, pp. 36–38) includes member’s rights and protection, local-level autonomy and local-level influence on the central party. The second dimension regards direct member participation, conventions as opposed to executive and presidential powers (ibid., pp. 38–41). Scholars in Macedonia analysing internal party democracy mention the following aspects. Siljanovska (2005, pp. 33–54), as criteria of analysis, includes: (1) vertical power sharing; (2) the role and status of individual members in internal party life and the guaranteeing of the autonomy of thought and opinion, as well as the possibility of being a minority without facing sanction; (3) the role and the status of party leader, party leadership and elected public functionaries; the method of recruitment and control mechanisms; (4) the network of horizontal structures and their role in internal party life and, (5) the relation of the party with civil society. The second, more quantitative analysis of Daskalovski and Cekov (2013, pp. 11–12) includes eight dimensions, namely: (1) members’ rights; (2) the relations between the party and its parliamentary group; (3) the prerogatives of the party president; (4) the horizontal structure of the party; (5) the autonomy of local party offices; (6) the autonomy of

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local branches at the time of elections; (7) the competences and the election procedures of party leaders and, (8) the nomination of candidates for public functions and electoral lists. Both of these analyses display a clear, undivided evaluation of the political parties in Macedonia as being highly undemocratic on almost all accounts. Since this chapter has no ambition to build a model on its own, the results of both studies could be summarized in several points that display the organizations of political parties in Macedonia as elite-oriented, undemocratic and with a low level of party accountability towards their members. The Faction Dilemma Political factions are a party phenomenon that has not been taken by default as a positive occurrence in the history of political parties. Defining factions as: ‘legal or quasi-legal groups which propose candidates for public office and urge political programmes on the electorate’ (Ross, 1954, p. 100) or as: ‘a structured group within a political party which seeks, at a minimum, to control the authoritative decision-making positions of the party’ (Persico et al., 2011, p. 248) gives ground to instantly perceiving them as being a divisive phenomenon that breaks the unity of a given monolithic structure such as the political party in a concrete context. In history, political factions have come a long way from being ‘subversive of the national interest’ (McAllister, 1991, p. 206) as in the case of eighteenth-century Europe and America, to being a muchneeded tool for cooperation and competition within parties (Boucek, 2009, pp. 469–476) or an instrument for raising the appeal of the political party by addressing different layers of society as in the case of the catch-all parties (Kirchheimer, 1966 in McAllister, 1991, p. 207). There is no academic consensus as to whether political factions are short-lived and almost always temporary (Belloni & Beller, 1976, p. 533) or whether they are a more stable phenomenon that is different from party groups (Zuckerman, 1975, p. 20), but the positive role of party factions in enhancing intra-party democracy is by no means disputed. Party factions in the Macedonian case are still considered dangerous and subversive. The analysis of Daskalovski and Cekov (2013, pp. 15–18) indicates that no major political party in the Republic of Macedonia tolerates party factions and tendencies (except for the marginal centrist party

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of the Liberal Democrats—LDP), and that absolutely no political actor has legally envisaged factions as a possibility within the party statutes. This specific statutory approach of the discursive ‘silencing’ (Thiesmeyer, 2003, p. 2) of factions within party statutes positions the issue of party factions as a negative occurrence and breeds specific practices in party life among the political parties in the country. Even when differences within the parties have appeared in the past, they have either resulted in the breaking away of different fragments of the parties into a new political entity (with some later returning to the mother-party), or with individual persecutions of members that would be expelled from the party on the grounds of differing opinions that could be the basis for party factions (Thiesmeyer, 2003, p. 2). As Siljanovska (2005, p. 57) observes: ‘the factions and the tendencies are not guaranteed in a single party statute and attempts to change this situation are sanctioned with exclusion from the party’. This indicator speaks negatively on behalf of the democratic capacity of the parties in Macedonia and supports the thesis of Cross and Blais (2012, p. 128) that: ‘the party elite would generally prefer to preserve as much power as possible for themselves, so their initial reaction is to resist movements to give members more influence’. The frequent expulsion or secession of party members in situations where there are serious indications confirms that potential factions do exist, but political parties handle them promptly, as they are probably afraid of what Boucek (2009, p. 477) calls ‘degenerative factionalism’ that could in the long run dissolve the party. The lack of intra-party democracy among the parties in Macedonia is reflected in other elements of party organization and hierarchy as well, which generally confirm the diagnosis that the parties not just in Macedonia, but in the region as a whole were ‘mainly created internally, according to the “top-bottom” way of expanding their organisations and ˇ 2004, organisational development through limited penetration’ (Cular, p. 29). This implies a problematic relation in vertical accountability as well as troublesome modalities for the election of a president and party organs.

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Who Elects Whom and Who Is (Ir)responsible?—The Problem of Vertical Accountability Electing party organs and leaders is a criterion of intra-party democracy in all models that try to evaluate it. A leadership election has two opposing poles within the organizational manners of political parties globally or as Cross and Blais (2012, p. 129) have observed: ‘On a continuum considering the inclusiveness of the leadership selectorate, one endpoint is one or a small group of party elites anointing the leader, while the other is all supporters of the party in the general electorate making the choice’. The democratization of political parties within its structure is usually connected to broadening the base for a leadership election. In the case of the US: ‘At the beginning of the twentieth century, the US political system witnessed a fundamental change with the introduction of a legislative reform on candidate selection, the “direct primary”’ (Crutzen et al., 2010, pp. 212–213) which practically meant that parties were obliged by law to implement state-administered elections where the base of voters broadened to any legally qualified person that could vote. Broadening the base that votes for candidate election both in the US and later on in the US and in Western Europe: ‘substantially increased the competitiveness of candidate selection procedures in parties’ (ibid.). Speaking of the election procedures of the party leadership and leaders in Macedonian parties, they reflect the logic of the tight control of the party elite in the election process. In general, these features could be summarized by the following points (Siljanovska, 2005, pp. 46–50): – No primaries have been introduced in any party and the parties generally resist introducing them; – Almost all executive bodies are elected in national conventions (SDSM), by the assembly (LDP) or by congress (VMRO-DPMNE, DUI). – The proposing of executive bodies is carried out by a variety of actors, such as: municipal organizations, presidents, central bodies, and a number of delegates on the convention. – The process is bottom-up. Municipal organizations propose candidates, and their election is carried out by the highest body of the party. Selection criteria and procedure are usually determined by the central board (SDSM) or the central committee.

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In their quantitative model, Daskalovski and Cekov give adequate values to each modality related to election procedures with adequate interpretations of the election processes (see Table 7.1), which leads to the conclusion that each political party has its own idiosyncratic procedures when it comes to electing different organs. However, the problem of electing the party leadership lies not so much in undemocratic procedure, as much as in the intra-party constellations. Siljanovska (2005, pp. 46–47) objects that: ‘MPs, ministers and deputy ministers are ex officio members of the highest organs on a national level, as well as of the highest organs at a local level, the decision-making process is under the strong control of the president and the party leadership’. This leads to: ‘the development of an elitist type of internal party democracy while (…) MPs and councilors are subordinated to and dependent on the party leadership’ (ibid.). An inevitable occurrence in this kind of internal constellation is the so-called ‘cartelization’ (Katz & Mair, 2003, p. 2) of the political parties characterized by: ‘privileging the party in public office’ (ibid.) where the parties have: ‘risked being seen as privileging themselves, and, whether directly or indirectly, to have been using state resources in order to strengthen their own position in terms of subsidies, staffing, patronage, and status’ (ibid.). Political parties in Macedonia are no exclusion to this. This means that the political party elite imposes an additional mechanism of staying in power and that is the exchange of public offices as spoils for position votes in the party organs. In this kind of atmosphere: ‘candidates need the support of the selectorate, which is defined as the group of all party members who are entitled to vote in the party leadership election’ (Ron, 2012, p. 1312) and: ‘if selectors are offered office benefits, they compromise their policy ideals for office’ (ibid.). This is often the case in the Macedonian political environment, where the party elite grasps firmly onto the leading positions in the party, which often breeds president-oriented parties that apply the particratic manner of ruling. The Strong President and the Partocracy An analysis of the position of the party president in the political parties implies strong presidentialism within the parties where the party is practically identified with its leader, to the level that domestic scholars label the Macedonian party system as being ‘sultanistic’ (Siljanovska, 2005, p. 44).

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The competencies of the president vary in different parties, but comparative analysis shows that party presidents enjoy a wide array of prerogatives such as party representation, making political decisions on behalf of the party, the election and dismissal of various organs (vice presidents, even whole local branches as in the case of the DUI), proposing MP candidate lists for parliamentary elections and proposing electoral programmes (ibid.). However, Daskalovski and Cekov (2013, pp. 41–42) show that the presidents of different political parties have rather limited statuary competencies when it comes to nominating different functions, coalition decisions, the establishment of party organs as well as the development of the party programme (see Table 7.2). Formal competencies are not the sole decisive factor when it comes to the uneven distribution of power and influence in the structure of the Macedonian political parties. It has already been said that party officials belonging to governing structures have subtle mechanisms for controlling the selectorate, being that (when in power) they can distribute and practice patronage over state resources with which they can literally buy party allegiance. The winning party in the parliamentary elections gives the mandate for forming the government, which in practice is without exclusion the president of the winning party. This increases the appeal of the president and the leadership in general, mostly due to the exchange they can practice in allocating resources and political spoils after winning local or parliamentary elections. The concentration of power in the hands of party leaders and party elites is also reinforced by the manner of the ruling of political parties in power. This is a consequence of the specific occurrence, initially described in the Italian political system known as the partocracy (from the Italian, ‘partitocrazia’) which practically means: ‘government by political party, with the permeation of political party control in all spheres of life and certainly across the vague boundary between the (…) state and civil society’ (Krause, 1998, p. 150) where: ‘parties actually wield more power than the central government itself and (…) decide not only who gets patronage jobs but also such matters as control of broadcasting’ (LaPalombara, 1988, p. 114). Manoeuvring space for the redistribution of patronage is being widened by the loosely defined (or in some cases undefined) borders between the parties in power and the state, which practically overlap one another. This occurrence has been widespread in Macedonian politics and has been detected in the reports of several international organizations operating in Macedonia. The OSCE reports on

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the early parliamentary and presidential election in 2014 clearly diagnose the ‘misuse of state resources during the campaign’ (OSCE, 2014, p. 1) where: ‘elements of the campaign indicated an inadequate separation between party and state activities’ (ibid.). Within the context of elections, Freedom House reinforces the standpoints of the OSCE (Freedom House, 2015) and even suggests the media control by the government by: ‘indicating that the government was directly influencing editorial policies’ (Freedom House, 2016). State resources are not solely used to increase the chances of electoral victory but are also used as an instrument for strengthening the position of the president and party leadership within the party by the misuse of state resources. The Political Clientele The particratic manner of ruling in the political parties has a dual nature. On the one hand, leaders of the party and the party elite exchange political spoils for strengthening their position within the party, additionally spreading this manner of behaviour onto the electorate. In political science literature, it is hard to delineate between what Kopecky and Mair define as political patronage on the one hand, downsizing it to the position of the distribution within the authority of a single political entity, and political clientelism. Political clientelism can be understood in a number of ways. For Chaves and Stoller (2002, p. 8), it is: ‘the relations that are established between a “patron” who offers certain services and a “client” who in exchange for those services (or goods) permits the patron to govern and resolve issues without the client’s participation’. Other authors stress the element of: ‘transactions between politicians and citizens whereby material favours are offered in return for political support at the polls’ (Wantchekon, 2003, p. 400). Clientelism is based on: ‘voluntary, reciprocal, face-to-face links between individuals of unequal status who exchange noncomparable goods and services in a relationship that may involve affectivity, (…) based on norms of reciprocity and obligation and plays out over time and across a broad series of interactions’ (Roniger, 1990, pp. 2–4 in Hilgers, 2008, p. 125). However, none of these definitions provide any insight into what is then the difference between clientelism and political patronage, understood as the normal distribution of positions and spoils within the political parties, both to the electorate and the selectorate.

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As Weitz-Shapiro (2012, p. 569) argues it is not the ‘what’, but ‘it is the “how” of distribution that distinguishes clientelism from other forms’. In other words, as Hilgers (2008, p. 125) says: Describing clientelism as a simple exchange of support for benefits does not distinguish it from patronage, vote buying, or porkbarreling. Patronage is the distribution of public sector jobs to loyal supporters who help the candidate or party by collecting information on voters and generating votes, frequently through clientelism (Remmer, 2007). The recipients of patronage are thus often the middlemen (or brokers) in clientelistic relationships. It has been said that such brokers are sometimes patrons and sometimes clients, depending on the people they are dealing with (see, e.g., Powell, 1970).

The case of Macedonia is notorious when it comes to political clientelism. Within the structure of the parties, the situation is clear—political positions are being strengthened and maintained through the overlap between the party in office and the party in government. In the political arena outside the party structures, things become more complicated. After the wiretapping scandal in 2015, when the opposition SDSM publicly released wiretapped materials of high-ranking government officials, it was clear that Macedonian politics is based on a complete blurring of the separation of powers, the influence of the political parties in power over the judiciary, the persecution of the political opposition and the electoral process which involves massive vote buying, forced voting as well as attempts at electoral fraud (Fokus, 2015). The wiretapping scandal also publicly displayed a classical clientele and patronage system of public position-distribution that definitely supersedes the distribution definition of political patronage of Kopecky and Mair. The reasons for such behaviour by the political elites in the last three decades are many and varied. Gjuzelov (2013, p. 102) explains it through the perspective of political culture, in other words, the demand-side of political clientelism. Indicators stemming from the field of political culture indicate that Macedonian citizens recognize the phenomenon (Markovikj et al., 2011, p. 34) and have rather submissive standpoints towards authority which is the very foundation of the voluntary and asymmetrical relations required by clientelism. Freedom House in its reports on Macedonia also notes that personal and political ties are pivotal in acquiring a job, especially in the public administrations (Freedom House,

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2012 in Gjuzelov, 2013, pp. 102–103) and the reports of Transparency Macedonia give even more negative qualifications (ibid.) such as partization and nepotism in the public administration, party racketeering and the complete partization of the state apparatus. Such a managerial modus operandi of running the state derives from the political culture of both elites and citizens and is surely one of the sources of the conflictual political arena where the elites in power change, but clientelism and patrimonialism survive.

Political Dialogue and Contentious Politics The fusion of the party and the state has a prehistory in the case of all post-communist regimes. This resulted in a thorough resentment towards political parties and political life in general or as Pop-Eleches and Tucker (2011, p. 382) argue: ‘the fusion of the party and state apparatuses meant that the Communist Party held a ubiquitous and usually hated presence in the lives of most East Europeans’. Although Pop-Eleches and Tucker do not deny the possibility of such a resentment in post-communist countries being caused exclusively by the experience of traumatic transition, recent research shows that it is still present in Macedonia, even after more three decades under a democratic regime. Research on political culture (Markovic, 2012, pp. 6–11) indicates high scepticism towards politics, very low institutional confidence, resentment towards associating politics with the intimate sphere, accompanied by a high awareness of its importance and the level of penetration into one’s personal life. This phenomenon is accompanied with low associational capacity, clientelistic and patrimonial values and practices as well as one of the lowest levels of social trust in the region (ibid.). Low levels of social trust in postcommunist societies are directly related with high levels of corruption (Mungiu-Pippidi, 2005, p. 52) in creating an atmosphere of distrust and scepticism in the political field. The political values of Macedonian transitional society explain the general atmosphere in which the political arena operates. General social distrust is reflected in the functioning of political actors, especially during times of political crises. A short glimpse at the major political crises in Macedonian society since its independence (see Table 7.3), leads to several conclusions.

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– In all major crises in Macedonia, the political parties were unable to reach agreements and exit scenarios without the patronage of the international community; – All the crises where the international community had not intervened remain unresolved; – Most of the political crises in Macedonia have ended in the boycott of parliament causing these crises to spill over outside these institutions. – Disagreements among political parties are not exclusively interethnic but also happen within one ethnic block. – There is a repetitive pattern of informal practices imposed by the international community when solving the crises (leader’s meetings predominantly). The obvious inability to create a normal political atmosphere of dialogue and understanding, leads to Macedonian political actors being labelled as contentious and conflictual. This hampers public deliberation not just among political actors but in society in general, leading to a complete lack of what Rasch (2011, p. 3) calls ‘true deliberation’ which requires reflexive thinking and possibilities for changing petrified standpoints. On the other hand, as Kemp (2013, p. 30) points out intra-party democracy is a necessary precondition for inter-party dialogue, and in the Macedonian case neither seems to be very present. The undemocratic structure of the political parties is directly reflected in the political field where Parliament is more frequently used as a tool for expressing political standpoints in the form of parliamentary boycott, than as the centre of democratic deliberation and minimal political agreements that would contain the political process within the institutions. The history of the political boycotts of the Macedonian parliament (see Table 7.4) clearly indicates that political parties misuse its legislative and deliberative function, given the variety of grounds for boycotting the Parliament, and only share the fact that the boycott is exclusively set forth by oppositional parties. One of the worst consequences of the Macedonian political process is the inability to take ownership of the political dialogue (UNDP, 2009, p. 5), where political parties see the dialogue as being imposed by international actors and even reject any responsibility in implementing the results of the agreed solutions. Such cases include the Ohrid Framework Agreement, the ad hoc Committee that was formed to investigate the parliamentary crisis

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of 24 December 2012 and even the formation of the Special Prosecutor’s Office after the wiretapping scandal in 2015. In all cases, political parties have agreed to act upon arrangements made with the mediation of the international community whereas that mediation has more recently been advertised as being patrimonial and imposed. This approach grants amnesty to political actors for unpopular political actions, giving them an opportunity to dodge public disapproval. However, the real consequence has been the deepened gap in confidence between political actors and the inability for longstanding solutions, reflected in the repetition of the political crises in different forms. Contentious politics and a hampered political dialogue have been reflected in the overall democratic performance of the Macedonian political sphere (see Table 7.5). Although one could blame the overall democratic decline happening in societies across southeastern Europe connected to the loss of leverage of the international actors, the EU especially, it is obvious that Macedonia is worsening in terms of crucial categories when it comes to democratic governance, most notoriously in the sphere of media freedom, where in seven years before the 2016 national elections it fell down, 84 places in World Media rankings (see Table 7.6). The lack of intra-party democracy, the inability to achieve political dialogue without international mediation as well as the constant decline of democratic quality, all contribute to a very specific phenomenon that replaces institutional mechanisms for deliberation and conflict resolution. Informal mechanisms, such as leaders’ meetings, have become a replacement for the political dialogue and institutional procedures that every democracy should be built around. Where Informality Prevails A political process that is being heavily burdened with distrust among political actors, can hardly lead to institutional confidence. Low confidence in the institutions and one of the lowest levels of social capital compared with the whole region, puts Macedonia in the group of public mistrust societies (Giordano & Hayoz, 2013, p. 15) where political ties are built based on kinship and solidarity groups, rather than on authentic political affiliation or political interest. What is more the widespread phenomenon of political clientelism enforced by such ‘clan’ parties means that the ‘state (…) is marked by a more-or-less arbitrary approach on

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the part of the incumbents of political positions of leadership and power, the appointment of loyal followers and favourites to state and administrative offices, the more-or-less unchecked access to state resources and their appropriation for private ends, the securing of privileges as well as hierarchically organized opportunities for the leaders’ supporters in the administrative sectors and public offices to access and appropriate funds’ (Sterbling, 2013, p. 83). In this group of societies that Mungiu-Pippidi (2005, p. 50) refers to as ‘particularistic’, social status is determined predominantly by belonging to a certain status group, and law is applied selectively, depending on the social circle one belongs to as well as the position in the hierarchy within that circle. Law is not neutral and does not apply to all equally. This specific political context breeds a whole new logic of political functioning among the political elites that instead of relying on the unbiased rules of the institutional setup, choose to govern relying on familiarity and outside the formal frontier defining a whole new realm of informal politics, a phenomenon well-known to transitional societies. In this case, the legitimization of political elites does not come through a legitimate political process. Instead: ‘for the political and economic elites, informal networks, personal trust and trustworthiness are a means for achieving and maintaining power’ (Hayoz, 2013, p. 48) where the ultimate end is rarely for the public good. Instead, society adapts to extra-institutional political rules imposed by elites and creates a number of informal institutions such as: ‘socially shared rules, usually unwritten, that are created, communicated, and enforced outside of officially sanctioned channels’ (Heimke & Levitsky, 2004, p. 727). While society adapts to the realm of the informal (a practice well developed during communism), the high end of the political process is not based on decisions leading to improving various spheres of society but rather: ‘the very meaning of informal politics and institutions is oriented towards restricting or eliminating political competition’ (Hayoz, 2013, p. 49). However, particularistic societies such as Macedonia can hardly function without informal institutions. Giordano (2013, p. 35) precisely points out that: ‘the clientele system in public mistrust societies turns out to be a bridging mechanism between state and society’ where informal institutions play a vital role even in domains that are out of the stereotypical understanding of informality as a bridging mechanism between the individual and state administration. One of these spheres is the very political process in Macedonia regarding political solutions imposed

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in situations where political dead ends cannot be surpassed by endogenous political efforts. As already indicated, no major political crisis in Macedonia has been overcome without the efforts of the international community. Crises like the conflict in 2001, the new territorial organization of Macedonia in 2004 as well as the political crises in 2015, after the release of the wiretapped materials by the opposition, required a mechanism for overcoming them, in situations where the institutional channels could hardly be described as being sufficient. Frequent political boycotts of the Parliament have decreased the value of Parliament as the cornerstone of political dialogue and the proper arena for political compromise. Instead, the political process regularly spills over into informal modalities, known in Macedonia as leaders’ meetings. Leaders’ meetings could be defined as the practice of negotiating political issues among the political party leaders mediated by the international community. Moreover, they are a modality where the major political party leaders and their delegated representatives negotiate around major politically conflicting issues, occurring outside of the formal institutions to consensually seek a formal institutional resolution on politically conflicting issues. This format was implemented in Macedonia for the first time during the negotiations of the four major political parties on the occasion of the Ohrid Framework Agreement, after the conflict in 2001. It was exactly one of the main criticisms of the Agreement, namely the particratic, closed manner in which it was negotiated (Siljanovska, 2001, p. 123) although there could hardly have been any alternative in the given context. Nevertheless, this set up a manner of behaviour in times of political turmoil, stimulated by the inability of domestic political actors to come to democratic solutions, mediated mostly by the EU and the US, often involving ‘carrot and stick’ politics (Markovic et al., 2011, p. 19). Apart from the Ohrid Framework Agreement, almost all major political crises were resolved by leaders’ meetings including the territorial organization of the country in 2004, the May Agreement from 2007, the parliamentary crisis from 2012 as well as the Przhino agreement deriving from the wiretapping scandal of 2015. Leaders’ meetings practically become the determinant of the formal political system due to the fact that whatever is agreed on in these meetings is later put through the legislative process. This speaks on behalf of the democratic capacity of the political actors, but also on behalf of the approach of the international community, which has precisely located political mechanisms through which one of the fundamental rules of

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informality, summarized in the motto ‘whatever works’ (Ledeneva, 1998) is being tested time and time again as the only effective remedy for political problems. Frequently having a strong element of external stimulation, the informal practice of leaders’ meetings is not envisaged in any formal document of the Macedonian political system, but nonetheless presents a very practical modus operandi of domestic politics. In this sense, the leaders’ meeting represents a typical example of the substitutive informal institution (Heimke & Levitsky, 2004, p. 728), defined as having divergent ends with formal institutions (political dialogue) in a context where these formal political institutions, the Parliament especially, are both ineffective and inefficient. Leaders’ meetings are the testimony of a political process spilled out of formal institutions which additionally undermine public trust in the process itself but above all else create a resentment of the political actors involved in them.

Conclusion Pluralism and the multiparty system were established in the Republic of Macedonia ever since its independence in 1991. The newly established party system gave birth to many political actors and as many as three electoral models, in an attempt to find the most appropriate electoral model for the political scene organized around the ethnic divide of ethnic Macedonians and ethnic Albanians, as well as the typical communistanti-communist dichotomy. Regardless of the specificities of the political actors present on the political scene, one feature has hardly ever changed since the beginning of political pluralism and that is the undemocratic character of political parties. The predominance of the political leadership, and especially the sultanistic position of the political leaders within the parties is just the beginning of the challenges of intra-party democracy in the organizing structure of the political parties. The political patronage model, based on an overlap of the party in office and the party in government, offers vast possibilities for the political trade of spoils for ‘selectorate’ votes, thereby strengthening the position of a given political elite within the party. When this is accompanied with the widespread particratic manner of managing the electorate as well, then the challenge to intra-party democracy becomes even greater, leading to frequent abuses of political power in exchange for votes.

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Such political mannerism leads to the creation of a political clientele within the party as well as generally in society, where political legitimacy, more often than not, becomes a matter of political trade-offs and not of political ideas. This surpasses the idea of resource distribution and ends up in a specific model of political patrimonialism that breeds resentment towards the political actors. This resentment is accompanied by a low institutional confidence and weak social capital, as some of the features that additionally spur the atmosphere of societal distrust. Additionally, the political arena, under such pressure becomes highly conflictual and unable to internalize any specific institutional and legal rules that would help toovercome recurrent political crises. The high conflict potential of the political actors becomes an entry point for the international community that serves as a mediator for resolving political crises, without which, as political history has proven, solutions to political hardships are unmanageable. Lastly, the eroding quality of democracy in Macedonia, especially in the last decade, has been stimulated by another specific phenomenon that places politics outside the institutional arena into a pseudo-formal surrounding. The reoccurring practice of leaders’ meetings presents itself as a panacea for overcoming political problems that once solved, are just directed through the legal channels. Not being a formal part either of the political or the party system of the country, leaders’ meetings are simply the symptom of an impotent and undemocratic political sphere, dependent on international mediation, which has unnecessarily spilled over the borders of the institutional setup, and is far from being a long-term solution.

Annex See Tables 7.1, 7.2, 7.3, 7.4, 7.5, and 7.6.

2

2

1.5

Elections of party functions/recall of vice-president

Elections of party functions/general secretary

Elections of party functions/recall of Executive Board

Source Daskalovski and Cekov (2013, p. 31)

2

SDSM

1

0.5

1

2

VMRO-DPMNE

1

2

0.5

2.5

LDP

0.5

1

1

2

DUI

0.5

0.5

0.5

2

DPA

0.5

0.5

0.5

2

NPR All members vote = 3 Vote by the Congress = 2 Vote by the General Council = 1 Control of the president/presidency/executive body = 0 All members vote = 3 Congress = 2 General Council = 1 Control of the president/presidency/executive body = 0 All members vote = 3 Congress = 2 General Council = 1 Control of the president/presidency/executive body = 0 All members vote = 3 Congress = 2 General Council = 1 Control of the president/presidency/executive body = 0

Index of party democracy in Macedonia—General level of democracy within the party

Elections of party functions/recall of president

Table 7.1

132 N. MARKOVIKJ

1

2

Who develops the programme for local elections

SDSM

2.5

0.5

VMRO-DPMNE

0.5

1

LDP

0.5

2

DUI

0.5

1.5

DPA

0.5

2

NPR

(continued)

Locals may initiate a new branch autonomously of central decision = 3 Locals found a branch in cooperation with central office which votes the proposal = 2 Local branches are founded by General Council = 1 Local branches are founded by the party executive office = 0 Local branches = 3 Local branches in consultation with the General Council = 2 Local branches in consultation with the party executive = 1 Party executive/expert group without consulting branches = 0

Explanation of the Index (in-between categories possible too)

Index of party democracy—Relations between the central party organs and the local branches

Who has the right to establish party branches

Table 7.2

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0.5

1

Who nominates/approves candidates for local assembly lists?

Ordering of candidates for local assembly lists?

SDSM

1

(continued)

Who nominates/approves candidates for mayor?

Table 7.2

1

1.5

2.5

VMRO-DPMNE

1

1

0.5

LDP

0.5

0.5

2

DUI

1.5

1.5

1.5

DPA

1

1

1

NPR

Local branches = 3 Local branch in consultation with the General Council = 2 Local branches in consultation with the party executive = 1 Party executive/expert group without consulting branches = 0 Local branches = 3 Local branch in consultation with the General Council = 2 Local branches in consultation with the party executive = 1 Party executive/expert group without consulting branches = 0 Local branches = 3 Local branch in consultation with the General Council = 2 Local branches in consultation with the party executive = 1 Party executive/expert group without consulting branches = 0

Explanation of the Index (in-between categories possible too)

134 N. MARKOVIKJ

1.5

2

Is it possible that members of local branches hold a position at the central level of the party?

Can the local branch nominate delegate to the Convention and General Assembly?

Source Daskalovski and Cekov (2013, pp. 41–42)

0.5

Decisions on coalition partners at local elections

SDSM

2

1.5

0

VMRO-DPMNE

2.5

1

0

LDP

2.5

1

1

DUI

2.5

1

0.5

DPA

2

1

1

NPR

Local branches = 3 Local branch in consultation with the General Council = 2 Local branches in consultation with the party executive = 1 Party executive/expert group without consulting branches = 0 No = 3 Yes, elected by Congress = 2 Yes, elected by General Council =1 Yes, elected by Party Executive Office = 0 Yes, autonomous choice = 3 Yes, but approval by General Council = 2 Yes, but approval by Party Executive = 1 No = 0

Explanation of the Index (in-between categories possible too)

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135

Deficiencies stemming from the Ohrid Framework Agreement Parliamentary crisis of December Legal anomalies and 2012 inadequacies of the Code of Conduct of the Assembly of the Republic of Macedonia and the Law on the Assembly of the Republic of Macedonia, drafting of the budget for 2013, low level of political culture

May Agreement 2007

Deficiencies stemming from the Ohrid Framework Agreement

Ethnic Macedonian political parties in the Assembly of the Republic of Macedonia (mostly SDSM and VMRO-DPMNE)

Government of the Republic of Macedonia, guerilla Albanian structures, political parties in Macedonia (SDSM, VMRO-DPMNE, PDP and DPA) Government of the Republic of Macedonia, political opposition (VMRO-DPMNE), World Macedonian Congress VMRO-DPMNE and DUI

Interethnic tensions and conflict, overspill of the Kosovo crisis from 1999 into Macedonia

Law on territorial organization in 2004

Active political parties taking part in the elections in 1994 (SDSM, LPM, SP, VMRO-DPMNE and DP)

Electoral irregularities

Boycott of the Assembly of the Republic of Macedonia by the MPs from VMRO-DPMNE and the Democratic Party (second round of parliamentary elections–1994) Civil conflict in 2001

Major actors

Source of the crisis

Short history of political crises in the Republic of Macedonia 1994–2014

Crisis

Table 7.3

The crisis enden with the insufficient turnout on the referendum on the new territorial organization Leader’s meetings between VMRO-DPMNE and DUI Forming of a Committee as proposed by the President of the Republic of Macedonia and with the support of the International community—Report by the Committee accepted by the Assembly of the Republic of Macedonia

Political pressure by the EU and the USA—political negotiations and adopting of the Ohrid Framework Agreement

The crisis has never been overcome—the Assembly work without the MPs from VMRO-DPMNE and DP

Overcoming modality

136 N. MARKOVIKJ

Electoral irregularities

Boycott of the Assembly of the Republic of Macedonia by SDSM in 2014

Source Markovikj and Popovikj (2015, p. 18)

Source of the crisis

Crisis SDSM, VMRO-DPMNE, Assembly of the Republic of Macedonia

Major actors Ongoing crisis

Overcoming modality

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Table 7.4 Boycotts of the Macedonian Parliament 1994–2015 Year

Party/Coalition

Reason for boycott

1994–1998*

VMRO-DPMNE, Democratic Party

2005

DPA

2007

DUI

2006–2008*

DUI

2008

SDSM

2011

The opposition led by SDSM, NSDP and Nova Demokratija with exception of LDP

2012

SDSM

2013*

SDSM

August 2014–October 2014

DPA boycotts the Parliament

VMRO-DPMNE and the Democratic Party boycotted the second round of the elections since according to them in the first round, there were serious malfunctions in the voting process and efforts for falsification of the elections Claims for malfunctions in the local elections Disagreements regarding the type of implementation for double majority mechanism during voting On the 2006 Parliamentary elections, DUI won the majority of the Albanian votes and won 17 MPs but it was not included in the Government Arresting of the SDSM acting President and Mayor of Strumica, Zoran Zaev Freezing of the bank accounts of the A1 television and three newspapers owned by Velija Ramkovski Boycott of the Parliamentary coordination sessions due to disagreement about the points of business in the agenda During a budget session in the Parliament (24 December 2012), SDSM tried to block the passing of the Budget for the fiscal 2014, so their MPs were violently taken out by the Parliament security. The incident is referred as Black Monday Physical incident with the MPs from DUI

(continued)

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Table 7.4 (continued) Year

Party/Coalition

Reason for boycott

May 2014–September 2015

The opposition led by SDSM (without DPA and two MPs from SDSM: Solza Grcheva and Ljubica Buralieva. These two MPs were later excluded from the party for not obeying the party decision to boycott the Parliament)

SDSM did not recognize the results from the elections on 24 April, due to suspects of fraud including voting pressure, pressure over the employees in the public administration, buying of votes, pressure over companies, the beneficiaries of social transfers

Note *Several boycotts throughout this period

Table 7.5 Scores of the Republic of Macedonia in four categories according to Freedom House

National Democratic Governance Electoral Process Independent media Judicial Framework and Independence Democracy Score

2007

2008

2009

2010

2011

2012

2013

2014

2015

2016

3.75

4.00

4.00

4.00

4.00

4.25

4.25

4.25

4.25

4.75

3.25

3.25

3.50

3.25

3.25

3.25

3.25

3.25

3.50

3.75

4.25

4.25

4.25

4.25

4.50

4.75

4.75

5.00

5.00

5.25

3.75

4.00

4.00

4.00

4.00

4.00

4.25

4.25

4.25

4.50

3.82

3.86

3.86

3.79

3.82

3.89

3.93

4.00

4.07

4.29

Source Freedom House (2016)

Table 7.6 Ranking of Macedonia on the World Press Freedom Index, 2003– 2016 2003 51/158

2004 49/157

2010 68/172

2011 /

2005 43/160 2012 116/177

Source Reporters without borders (2016)

2006 45/160 2013 116/177

2007 36/163 2014 123/179

2008 42/168

2009 34/169

2015 117/179

2016 118/180

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Note 1. The only exclusion were the elections in 2006 when the government was formed by the winner in the Macedonian ethnic block, VMRO-DPMNE, and a party that did not win the biggest number of the Albanian votes—the DPA. However, the pre-term parliamentary elections in 2008 once again reestablished the unwritten rule of governments being formed by winners in both ethnic campuses—VMRO-DPMNE and DUI.

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CHAPTER 8

Macedonia’s Euro-Atlantic Integration Blerim Reka

Introduction Throughout the thirty years of Macedonian independence, the relationship between the Republic of Macedonia and the European Union (EU) has been based upon a trilateral status. In the first decade of independence, Macedonia established official bilateral relations with the EU. Then, in 2001, the Macedonian government signed the Stabilisation and Association Agreement (SAA) with the EU, applied for EU membership and in 2005 gained candidate status, but was unable to begin accession negotiations with the EU. Since 2009, despite positive EC recommendations for the start of accession negotiations, the integration of the country was put on hold. As far as NATO integration was concerned, in 2020 the Republic of North Macedonia became the thirtieth NATO member state. After the conflict in 2001, the EU had in Macedonia its first ever military crisis management mission, known as ‘Operation Concordia’, which benefitted from the preceding NATO operation ‘Essential Harvest’, and for a decade the European Union Special Representative (EUSR) had a presence in the Republic of Macedonia. After the political crisis of

B. Reka (B) UBT College, Pristina, Republic of Kosovo

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 R. Hudson and I. Dodovski (eds.), Macedonia’s Long Transition, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-20773-0_7

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2015, the EU again returned to politically facilitate an exit strategy from Macedonia’s biggest internal crisis. An intra-ethnic clash substituted an inter-ethnic one, which was managed through the ‘Przhino political process’. In addition to these two internal problems, for two and a half decades, Macedonia was confronted with one external issue, the name dispute with Greece, and more recently this was followed by a further issue with Bulgaria. Just as Greece’s veto at the NATO Summit in Bucharest in 2008 had blocked Macedonia’s membership bid, so the Bulgarian veto blocked the start of the EU accession negotiations between 2019 and 2022. The ‘name issue’ with Greece was resolved in 2018, and although the closure of ‘historical disputes’ with Bulgaria was expected with the bilateral agreement of 2017, its veto over the last three years has damaged the spirit of optimism. Both internal and external problems confronting Macedonia have delayed its European integration. There have been 10 Progress Reports between 2009 and 2019, where the European Commission recommended the start of accession negotiations, but before 2014 the European Council regularly conditioned this with ‘finding a solution to the name issue’ with Greece. For the first time, in December 2015 the European Council in addition to that external condition asked for the fulfilment of internal conditions, namely the full implementation of ‘The Przhino Agreement’ of 15 July 2015, and of the Ohrid Framework Agreement (OFA) of 13 August 2001. The Republic of North Macedonia is the only country (apart from Turkey) with such a long-delayed status. Inside the country, EU and NATO integration has always had the highest support among its citizens, and this has been one of the key issues which have had a multi-ethnic consensus. But apart from this general popular support, the Government until 2016 has not pushed the process of Euro-Atlantic integration any further. This has been due to either a lack of political will for EU agenda reform or the lack of administrative capacity to handle this, not forgetting Greece’s blockade. After 30 years of independence, it was expected that the new state, which had emerged from the former communist federation, would build its future through the Western democratic model of political systems, through multi-ethnic reconciliation, economic development and a market economy. Macedonia became an independent state quite peacefully, and in this process of post-communist and post-conflict transformation, it

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was expected that the new country would inaugurate the model of a democratic multi-ethnic state, as a future EU and NATO member. But democracy failed to function. There was no evidence of multi-ethnic coexistence, nor any quasi-privatisation of the state’s economy. So, apart from the longstanding external issue of the name dispute with Greece, and more recently with Bulgaria, this chapter will concentrate on an analysis of two key internal processes which were marked by both the EU and NATO as being preconditions for the further Euro-Atlantic integration of the Republic of Macedonia. They are inter-ethnic reconciliation, through the OFA, and, intra-ethnic political dialogue, through the Przhino Agreement (2015).

Two External and Two Internal Problems The Greece-Macedonia dispute constituted an asymmetric negotiation process of two unequal parts (Reka, 2010, p. 76): one being a member of the EU and NATO, with its golden right of veto (Greece), and the other, lying outside these two organisations, which is trying to become an EU member and a member of NATO (Macedonia). This asymmetry is not only caused by the status of the negotiating subjects but is determined as well by the content of that negotiation. One is negotiating on the constitutional name of the other with the request to change it, and the other party is protecting the constitutional name of its state. This asymmetric power of Greece, not only towards the Republic of Macedonia but also with regard to all EU candidates in the region, was confirmed by the former Greek Foreign Minister Kotzias (see Reka, 2016, pp. 2–3), when he said that in Greek relations with Albania: ‘Greece has asymmetric representations in the international arena’. That is why after two decades of hard negotiation, Greece and Macedonia, although maintaining good economic relations (Mardas & Nikas, 2005, p. 256), did not find a common acceptable solution. By this, as one scholar has noted, the name issue has been keeping: ‘the destiny of Macedonia on hold’ (Perry, 1998, p. 119). If Macedonia had no power itself to solve this external issue with Greece, at least the closure of two remaining internal issues was possible, in order to overcome the status quo of Euro-Atlantic integration. If we summarised the way in which inter-ethnic reconciliation and intra-ethnic

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political clashes were treated by the Macedonian Governments (as preconditions for its Euro-Atlantic integration), there are a number of different approaches that have been applied in three distinct periods. The first period, 2002–2006, was a satisfactory period for the implementation of OFA. During the first four years, the Ohrid Agreement was mainly implemented, though not meeting the imposed implementation deadline of 2004. During the second period, 2007–2014, the EU and NATO noted serious shortcomings in Macedonia’s implementation of OFA. The Macedonian Government set aside inter-ethnic relations as its political priority, and the main focus was on the ‘name dispute’, thereby neglecting the sources of inter-ethnic conflict within the country. The issue of the name was imposed before the state although the conflict in 2001 did not begin because of the country’s name but because of the discriminatory status of the Albanians in Macedonia. With such a shift of political priorities, under the pressure of ‘resolving the name dispute with Greece’, the implementation of OFA was left aside even in this second period. In the third period, from February 2015 onwards, in addition to the existing inter-ethnic crisis and the external dispute with Greece, Macedonia entered into an even deeper political crisis between the two main ethnic Macedonian political parties: the SDSM and VMRO-DPMNE over the tape scandal. The Przhino Process, based on the recommendations of Priebe’s Report (2015), set clear actions with fixed dates for implementation as an EU exit strategy from the biggest political crisis, but without concrete results. Within two years, not a single criminal case initiated by the Special Prosecutor had been brought to court, nor were the extraordinary general elections held until the end of 2016. Several dates were announced and cancelled. Parliament was disolved three times, and three interim technical governments were formed before the election of 11 December 2016. One month before these elections, the European Commission in its annual report for Macedonia recommended ‘urgent reform priorities’ based on Priebe’s Report, and gave the hardest qualification for the country: ‘state capture’ (2016, p. 4). Brussels was offering the last chance to close the long political crisis as soon as possible and to urgently reform the state’s institutions, in particular to end the partisation of the judiciary and public administration. After the elections of 11 December 2016, and a long negotiation process, on 29 January 2017 a new coalition was agreed by the SDSM, DUI and the DPA to form the new government putting VMRO-DPMNE

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in opposition—for the first time after ten years. But President Gjorge Ivanov did not give the mandate to Zoran Zaev to serve as prime minister for a few months, and a new Parliamentary Speaker, Talat Xhaferri was only elected after Parliament’s bloody night of 27 April 2017. Only in May 2017 was the new Government of prime minister Zaev voted in, declaring Euro-Atlantic integration as its strategic orientation, along with good neighbourly relations and an improvement of interethnic relations. Regionally, it signed a bilateral agreement with Bulgaria (2017) and with Greece (2018), which opened the way towards EuroAtlantic integration. Domestically, the Government presented Parliament with a draft-law on languages, aiming to close the last remaining issue from OFA. After winning the general elections, the SDSM in coalition with DUI won in almost all the municipalities in the local elections of 15–29 October 2017,1 but later lost the majority of them in the local elections of 17 October 2021. At a central level, the SDSM-DUI coalition won the early elections of 2020 too and formed a second Zaev government. But after he lost the local elections of 2021, Zaev declared his resignation on 31 October 2021, which led to the interpellation of the Government on 11 November 2021, though in the face of only 60 opposition votes, it survived.

EU Integration Trough Inter-Ethnic Reconciliation One decade after independence, an inter-ethnic conflict had spoiled any kind of facade of democracy in the country. The war in 2001 had been brought to an end with the signing of OFA, which was to be the last peace agreement in the Western Balkans. On the 15th anniversary of the signing of this peace accord which provided ‘a classic case of conflict prevention’ (Pardew, 2011, p. 21), it was expected that in the future, the sources of this conflict would be avoided by the building of a democratic and multi-ethnic state. In accordance with this new multi-ethnic philosophy, the constitution of the Republic of Macedonia was changed and national legislation was harmonised so as to avoid ethnic solutions to territorial disputes and to inaugurate state ownership for all the citizens of the country (Danaj, 2008, p. 11; Reka, 2011, p. 2). But instead of a consensual democracy, the new state of Macedonia continued to apply a majority over-voting democracy. Based on Arend Lijphart’s theory of consociational democracy

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for multi-ethnic societies (Lijphart, 2004, p. 99), it is clear that Macedonia as a multi-ethnic society could not function as a state applying only a majority voting system, but combined with a consensus of all political actors and their equal citizens, thus avoiding further inter-ethnic confrontation, which had existed before 2001 (Maleska, 2013; Ostreni, 2000). This principle was adopted in the text of the OFA by the stipulation of a double-majority voting system of the laws affecting the interests of the non-majority population (known as the ‘Badinter Principle’), but for many years that inter-ethnic committee of the Parliament never got to meet in spite of many inter-ethnic incidents.2 It was also expected that the whole implementation process of OFA would be concluded by 2004, but this was not to be the case. So, although Macedonia may be considered to be a multi-ethnic society by its demographic composition, in certain instances, it continues to function as a mono-ethnic state (Reka, 2014, p. 21). The international community from the very beginning supported the new political philosophy of OFA, asking for its full implementation. Since 2002, the European Council qualified the conflict in 2001 as the ‘most serious political problem’, and requested the ‘full implementation of OFA’ (Council Decision, 2004). The European Commission in their Progress Reports (2005–2016), annually repeated these obligations towards the state institutions of the Republic of Macedonia, as a key political precondition for the fulfilment of the EU Copenhagen criteria. The full implementation of OFA was also stipulated as one of the key political benchmarks of the SAA process of the EU and Macedonia. Furthermore, on 16 December 2005, the European Council granted candidate status to the Republic of Macedonia, mostly for the progress demonstrated in its implementation of OFA (during the first four years: 2001–2005). A year after the signing of the OFA, the EU expected that the political elite of the country would target the sources of this serious political crisis and prevent the repetition of a new crisis. The same position of the EU was repeated during the process of ‘High Level Political Dialogue’ between the EU and the Republic of Macedonia during 2012– 2014, whereas once again, the full implementation of OFA was indicated as a key political precondition for the further progress of Macedonia towards EU Integration. Similar messages were delivered by NATO, between 2013 and 2018 when the Alliance requested the full implementation of OFA, expressing concerns regarding the lack of improvement of inter-ethnic relations; if

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not, in fact, an actual increase in inter-ethnic tensions in the country.3 Official messages also came from the US, while the full implementation of OFA remains the key factor for the political stability of the country. It was repeated later by US Vice-President Biden, and in the letter of Secretary of State Clinton, who once again called for the full implementation of OFA.4 As Ambassador Reeker (2011, p. 27) rightly summarised it: ‘the implementation of OFA is a process-one which is vital to the country’ s future’. Ever since 2006, the EU has been warning about a slowdown in the implementation of the OFA, and all EC Progress Reports and European Council conclusions have recalled time and again the need for the full implementation of OFA. So, OFA still has not been fully implemented, which continuously results in inter-ethnic clashes. Delay in the full implementation of OFA means a delay in building a multi-ethnic state. As Plaks (2001, p. 47) noted, there is a need of such instruments for ‘enhancing co-existence’ in the Republic of Macedonia. The EU Council, in 2004, through its legally binding act: the Council Decision 2004/518 on the European Partnership for Macedonia clearly noted that the ‘full implementation of OFA remains a short-term and a mid-term political objective’. The European Commission’s documents (2004) also stated the need for the full implementation of the spirit and norms of OFA, whose implementation significantly reduced ethnic tensions in the country. In its Progress Report for Macedonia (2005), the European Commission highlighted that the ‘Implementation of OFA is Macedonia’s greatest achievement, which re-gained trust between communities and helped restore stability in the country; as part of the fulfilment of the political criteria set by the European Council in Copenhagen in 1993. Taking into consideration this initial success in the implementation of OFA, the European Commission recommends that the Council of Europe grant candidate status for the Republic of Macedonia’. David Phillips (2011, p. 44) correctly pointed out that OFA was intended as a ‘launch point for Macedonia’s integration into the EU and NATO’. Meanwhile, in its Progress Reports between 2006 and 2010, the European Commission placed special weight on the full implementation of the spirit and norms of OFA, considering it as a key element for Macedonia’s progress towards EU membership, and the 2006 Progress Report highlighted the failure of the OFA implementation, in particular in terms of the Badinter decision-making principle of a double qualified majority.

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The implementation of OFA remains crucial to the enforcement of the positive environment for further reforms, therefore, the government was encouraged to continue with the process of the full implementation of the spirit and norms of OFA. In the 2007 Progress Report for the Republic of Macedonia, the European Commission noted: ‘shortcomings in the full implementation of the Ohrid Agreement’. Then, the 2008 Progress Report highlighted that progress was made, but the effective implementation of OFA needs to move forward, through a consensual approach and a spirit of compromise. Later, the Progress Report of 2009 noted the continuing of the decentralisation as a basic component of the OFA. The 2010 Progress Report once again stressed the importance of the full implementation of OFA and its significance in moving towards Macedonia’s membership of the EU. This report stated that the process of decentralisation was continuing and that the new Law on financing the municipalities had been amended to increase municipal budgets, but the report noted a lack of structured institutional relationship between the Stabilisation and Association Council and the Secretariat for Implementation of OFA. The same requirement for the Government of the Republic of Macedonia for the full implementation of the spirit and norms of OFA was also repeated in the 2011, 2012 and 2013 progress reports, requiring from the Government, not only a narrative report, but an annual review in the form of a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the implementation of OFA, based on measurable criteria. In the 2014 and 2015 reports, the same recommendations were repeated and based on these, the Secretariat for Implementation of OFA produced the first draft analysis in 2013, and the final draft by the end of 2015, but it was never accepted by the Government of the Republic of Macedonia as its official document. As noted above, the worst EC report was given on 11 November 2016, when the political situation in the Republic of Macedonia was described as being one of ‘state capture’.

Intra-Ethnic Dialogue as an EU Political Precondition In addition to inter-ethnic disputes, since February 2015, the Republic of Macedonia entered into its biggest intra-ethnic political crisis yet, after the publication of the ‘tape scandals’ of the highest state official. This serious political crisis happened 15 years after the 2001 conflict, and two decades after the beginning of the contest with Greece over the name issue. That

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is why 2016 has proved to be a crucial and most challenging year in the 30-year history of the country. Apart from the permanent external problem, the name issue with Greece continued to remain a complex problem (Parkas, 1997, p. 104); the country was faced with an internal problem too. Whereas up until 2015, the key precondition for any further integration progress was of an external nature, namely ‘resolving the name issue with Greece’; in the subsequent two years, the key issue became one of an internal nature: namely internal democratisation (Reka, 2016, p. 1). At the time, the political crisis did not offer much hope that the European Commission in its annual report for Macedonia on 3 November 2016 would issue a positive assessment; rather, it would repeat its ‘conditional recommendation’ of 2015 for the start of accession negotiations spending the full implementation of the Przhino Agreement. The rule of law, the fight against corruption and organised crime, together with political stability remained the key to the internal conditions of the European Commission for Macedonia. Without resolving the current political crisis, even a withdrawal of the European Commission recommendation for the start of accession negotiations was feared. So, Macedonia was becoming a ‘European dilemma’ (Perry, 1992, p. 40), and the ‘EU’s democratic dilemma’ too (Dimitrov, 2016, p. 2). During the two years of this crisis, the EU and US mediated the Przhino Process carefully and saved it from total failure. The process was based on Priebe’s Report (2015) and the Przhino Agreement (2 June–14 July 2015; and the accord of 31 August 2016), signed by four political leaders in the country. This EU reform package for the country contained two main pillars: the first was the political process, which meant forming a new technical government which would prepare credible elections. The second was the legal process; including the appointment of a Special Prosecutor for investigations of all the allegations of the corruption scandals of the highest leaders of the ruling government coalition presented to public opinion in 2015 and known as: the ‘bombs scandal’ (named after the ‘bombshells’ that were dropped by the SDSM opposition as they revealed the contents of some of the taped phone conversations). But the implementation period of this agreement demonstrated paradoxical clashes between two main tendencies: the speed of the elections and slow justice.

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Before 2017, only part of the first-political process was implemented, by the resignation of the Prime Minister, his replacement and the formation of a new technical government. But not all the requested electoral conditions (such as the distribution of equal voters in each of the election units) has been achieved.5 Within this first process, after ten years in power, prime minister Nikola Gruevski resigned; the Parliament was dissolved three times, three technical governments were created, and the date of the election day was postponed three times, first to 24 April, then to 5 June and finally to 11 December 2016, as the latest election date. Former Commissioner for the European Neighbourhood Policy and Enlargement Negotiations, Johannes Hahn, as EU mediator, had visited Macedonia several times, and in his last attempt on 14 October 2016, he tried to save the process by convincing all the political parties not to postpone the elections again, and to support the Special Prosecutor. As he advised the four political leaders: ‘The elections are important, but more important is the implementation of reforms from Priebe’s Report and the Przhino Agreement’ (Hahn, 2016, press conference on 14 October). With regard to the second pillar of the Przhino Agreement—its judicial aspect—the Special Prosecutor was appointed at the end of 2015 and opened an investigation into the allegations of corrupt deals by key figures in the Government, including the former Prime Minister. Criminal charges for six cases were initiated but none of them had proceeded to the courts before the end of 2016: in other words, not before the December 2016 elections. That this should be the case was for at least three reasons: firstly, for technical reasons given that voluminous tape-recorded allegations needed more time than just a year to process; secondly, the legal allegations of suspected highly corrupt scandals involving the Prime Minister and some other ministers of the ruling coalition, would if they were to be proven in the courts, result in long jail sentences for them. However, nothing has progressed because of the absence of a special court chamber for trying only these cases; and thirdly, from a political perspective, the court outcome of this scandal was dependent upon the election result. At least this clash between the speed of the elections and a slow judiciary had proven European Commission concerns and civil society critics to be correct with regard to the ‘lack of an independent judiciary’ (EPI, 2016), because the judges appointed in recent years did not proceed any criminal cases against any of the current state officials. This explains why the Judicial Council of the Republic of Macedonia, before the early elections in 2016, elected 45 new judges (EPI, 2016).

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By this non-implementation of the key reform priorities came the need to depoliticise the judiciary. So, the Przhino Process became a battleground between justice and politics. From the perspective of justice, the Office of the Special Prosecutor was expected to investigate within 18 months all allegations arising from the tape scandals of suspected corruption and illegal acts by high state officials and bring these allegations to criminal court procedure. Until the end of its mandate on 15 September 2019 (when practically this Przhino institution ended), not a single case was concluded with a final court decision. Before the end of its mandate, 171 case-dossiers of the Special Prosecutor were given to the Public Prosecutor’s Office (Nezavisen, 2019). The resignation of Special Prosecutor Katica Janeva, on 15 July 2019, came along with the arrest of two people suspected of racketeering of a businessman who had been formerly accused by her. This, in turn led to her own jail sentence on 21 August 2019. From 18 cases, with 90 accused former state officials, no one received a final court decision, and only one ended up in jail.6 The institution of the Special Prosecutor fell victim to a political battle, which ended its mandate on 15 September 2019.7 From the perspective of politics, there was a need to prepare free and democratic elections which could be accepted by all political parties, with the preparation of clean voting lists to avoid any state influence in the electoral process and free media coverage of the election campaign. The government intended to organise the elections as soon as possible and regain power for another mandate, before delivering suspected criminal cases from the Special Prosecutor to the courts. The opposition asked for the start of at least one criminal case initiated by the Special Prosecutor, before the elections, in order to assuage voters in the face of what had been called a ‘criminal government’.8 The governing party claimed that: ‘The Special Prosecutor had become an instrument of the SDSM’ (TV21, 2016). But before the end of 2016, no single case had been taken to the courts, which raised the need to establish a special chamber within the courts that was competent for the handling of those cases brought to it by the Special Prosecutor alone. This had not happened and at the beginning of October 2016, the Special Prosecutor initiated two new legislative initiatives: the Law on the extension of the Special Prosecutor’s mandate, asking for a prolongation of the first 18 months for an additional period; and next a Law on witness protection, because not one of the six criminal cases had had any court follow-up.9

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After the formation of a new government under the leadership of prime minister Zoran Zaev in 2017, the Special Prosecutor’s Office intensified their work for actual and new criminal cases, while a deep scanning of the judiciary started from the top positions in: the Judiciary Council, the State Prosecutor and the Supreme Court, as well as with regard to the judges in local courts. Two years from the start of that political crisis, Macedonia had elections but no court case over the ‘tape scandal’. How serious the political crisis in Macedonia was, is demonstrated by warnings from Brussels and Washington. In its conclusion of 18 December 2015, the European Council, for the first time in nine years insisted on an internal condition, namely the full implementation of the Przhino Agreement before an external one, the solving of the name dispute with Greece. One month later, similar messages were delivered from Washington. This time, on 11 January 2016, the US Vice President Joe Biden, asked former prime minister Gruevski for the fulfilment of three key political conditions: the full implementation of the Przhino Agreement; credible elections; and support for the Euro-Atlantic integration of the country. These EuroAtlantic messages were abundantly clear: if Euro-Atlantic integration were to lose momentum, Macedonia would lose the support of the EU and the US. The new Government of Zaev in the first months of 2017 showed a more moderate position in finding an acceptable solution with Greece to the name issue, even accepting the accession of the Republic of Macedonia into NATO under the interim name decided by the UN SC in 1995. Being such a long time in such a deep political crisis, Macedonia lost another Euro-Atlantic integration year in 2017. There was also the threat of the isolation of Macedonia by the international community upon the failure of the implementation of the Przhino Agreement, which would be followed by internal destabilisation, and possible external challenges. Internally, remaining out of NATO and the EU, the Republic of Macedonia would not be acceptable to a significant part of its population—the Albanians, who are all for the Euro-Atlantic future of the country. Externally, remaining out of the Euro-Atlantic umbrella with three open issues with its neighbours: Greece (name issue), Bulgaria (ethnic/national origin), and Serbia (the non-recognition of the Macedonian Orthodox Church) would provide a ‘perfect’ arena for the involvement of other big players, in particular Russia, which since 2014 has been repeating that ‘NATO enlargement in the Balkans is a provocation’.10

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The Government of the Republic of Macedonia has constantly repeated that there is no alternative to EU and NATO accession.11 NATO membership of the Republic of North Macedonia in 2020 was crucial for the stability of the country and the region. Remaining as a vacuumcountry: outside the Euro-Atlantic structures, the country would easily be ‘seized’ by another alternative strategic orientation: from the Northeast, and from the Southeast, which would both be dangerous for wider regional stability. The new Government of the Republic of Macedonia in 2017 in a way answered all these geostrategic dilemmas, repeating that Euro-Atlantic integration remains the only orientation for the country, and after three years, the country became the 30th NATO member state in 2020. After a diplomatic breakthrough in the turbulent Balkans, the country gained the pass for NATO integration under its newly agreed name as The Republic of North Macedonia, after the signing of the Prespa Agreement on 17 June 2018. This was ratified on 25 January 2019 in the Macedonian Parliament. Following the Przhino Process, this long open issue with Greece was finally closed (Reka, 2019, p. 2), and hopefully the last external issue, the historical and identity disputes with Bulgaria (2019– 2021), which have been blocking the start of accession negotiations with the EU for the last three years, will also soon be closed so as to unblock the start of accession negotiations the Republic of North Macedonia with the EU.

Conclusions 1. For the European integration of the Republic of North Macedonia, two internal and two external factors were and will be of high importance, namely: the resolution of inter-ethnic and intra-ethnic problems; and the settlement of neighbouring disputes with Greece and Bulgaria. 2. Building a democratic, functional and multi-ethnic state remains the strategic goal for the future of the Republic of North Macedonia. The country is a NATO member, but it has not yet started EU accession negotiations. The closing of the inter-ethnic and intra-ethnic crisis and the resolution of the historical disputes with Bulgaria, as in the case of the name dispute with Greece, is key to this integration process.

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3. Apart from the external open issue, the stability of the country depends on internal inter-ethnic stability. In the long-term, the Republic of North Macedonia should resolve internal issues with the Albanians. Externally, neighbours are important, but internally, more important are the members of the family. Another repetition of 2001 would be catastrophic not only for the Republic of North Macedonia, but for the region and for broader stability as a whole, in particular with regard to the changed world of the new cold war geopolitics in Europe and with the increased influence of non Euro-Atlantic powers. 4. In addition to inter-ethnic disputes, intra-ethnic political disputes are important too, in particular the permanent political battle of the opposition, which pushes the country into the never-ending early elections. Frequent elections and unstable governments would only delay further the Euro-integration path of the Republic of North Macedonia.

Notes 1. VMRO_DPMNE won in only 3 municipalities, whereas 43 other went to SDSM including the City of Skopje; DUI won 10 municipalities, AA 3, BESA 1 and DPA 1 municipality. 2. The aggravation of inter-ethnic relations started in the second part of 2006, and culminated during 2007–2015, with the scandal over the first Macedonian Encyclopaedia; riots and inter-ethnic clashes at the Kale of Skopje; inter-ethnic clashes between high school students in Skopje; and racist demonstrations at sport events. 3. This message was delivered to the highest state institutions of the Republic of Macedonia by Deputy General Secretary of NATO Ambassador Dirk Brengelman, during his visit to Skopje 5–6 July 2013. At the NATO Wales Summit (2014) and NATO Warsaw Summit (2016), the full implementation of OFA was noted officially in the Summit conclusions. 4. Letter of former Secretary of State Clinton, on the occasion of the 21st anniversery of the independece of Macedonia, 8th September 2012. The similar concerns regarding the derogation of inter-ethnic relations in Macedonia were presented in the Annual Report of the State Department of the USA for 2012 on the situation of Human Rights in the world. 5. Discussion on how to reduce balance, the 6th election unit (with much more voters than other units) with other election units was not solved until one month ahead of the scheduled election for 11 December 2016.

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6. Except court case ‘Tank’, which ended with a sentence for former prime minister Gruevski, but was not enforced, due to his escape to Hungary in November 2018. 7. Until 27 August 2019, when the Parliamentary session for the new Law of the Public Prosecutor was convoked, no agreement between SDSM and VMRO-DPMNE was reached on the future of institution of the Special prosecutor. 8. This was the main slogan of the opposition’s massive protests in the country during 2015–2016. 9. Neither on 4 October nor on 17 October did the Macedonian Parliament vote on any of these initiatives, and legislative initiative had clearly failed. In addition, the Constitutional Court of the Republic of Macedonia had not decided on the initiative for the constitutionality of the Special Prosecutor, which was yet another pressure placed upon this key institution established by the Przhino Agreement. 10. Vice prime minister of Russia, Dimitrij Rogozin, in his interview to Serbian daily Politika, 13 January 2016. 11. Joint statement of three ministers N. Popovski (Minister of Foreign Affairs), Z. Jolevski (Minister of Defence) and O. Spasovski (Minister of Interior), at the Conference of Global Challenges, Skopje, 14 October 2016.

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Ostreni, G. (2000). Shpresa dhe Zhgënjimi i shqiptarëve në Maqedoni. Prishtinë: Instituti i Historisë së Kosovës. Pardew, J. W. (2011). Diplomatic history of the OFA. 10 Years of OFA—Is Macedonia functioning as multi-ethnic state? Tetovo: SEEU Press. Parkas, C. C. (1997). The United States, Greece and Macedonia issue. World Affairs, 159(3), 103–108. Perry, D. M. (1992). Macedonia: A Balkans problem and a European dilemma. RFE/RL Research Report 1(25). Perry, D. M. (1998). Destiny on hold: Macedonia and the dangers of ethnic discord. Current History, 97 (617), 119–126. Phillips, D. L. (2011). Preventive diplomacy in Macedonia. 10 Years of OFA—Is Macedonia functioning as multi-ethnic state? SEEU Press. Plaks, L. (2001). Regional perspectives on OFA as a model for enhancing coexistence in a multi-ethnic state. 10 Years of OFA—Is Macedonia functioning as multi-ethnic state? SEEU Press. Reeker, P. T. (2011). The road ahead: The path of leadership. 10 Years of OFA—Is Macedonia functioning as multi-ethnic state? SEEU Press. Reka, B. (2010). The geopolitics and the technique of EU enlargement. Aspect. Reka, B. (2011). The Ohrid framework agreement: A new political philosophy for the functioning of a multi-ethnic state. 10 Years of OFA—Is Macedonia functioning as multi-ethnic state? SEEU Press. Reka, B. (2014). Ohrid peace process: The past, the actuality and the future perspective. Sudost-Europa, 62. Jahrgang-Heft 1. Reka, B. (2016, April 4). Macedonia: 2016 offers shrinking hope and growing worry. Geopolitical Intelligence Services. Reka, B. (2019, October 7). Impact of Greece-Macedonia deal. Geopolitical Intelligence Services. Reka, B. (2020). Balkans geopolitics: Between cold war and hot peace. Geopolitical Intelligence Services. TV21. (2016, October 16). Speech of the President of VMRO-DPMNE Nikola Gruevski at the meeting in Skopje on 16 October 2016. TV 21, central news at 18:30.

Documents Commission of the European Communities. (2002, April 4). Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia Stabilisation and Association Report, SEC (02)342. Commission of the European Communities. (2004, March 30). Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia Stabilisation and Association Report, SEC (04)373. Commission of the European Communities. (2005, November 9). 2005 Enlargement Strategy Paper, COM (2005)561 final.

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Commission of the European Communities. (2005, November 9). Opinion on the application from the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia for Membership of the European Union, COM (205)562 final; SEC (2005)1425; SEC (2005)1429. Commission of the European Communities. (2006a, November 8). Enlargement strategy and main challenges 2006–2007, COM (2006)649. Commission of the European Communities. (2006b, November 8). The former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia 2006 Progress Report, SEC (2006)1387. Commission of the European Communities. (2007a, November 6). Enlargement strategy and main challenges 2007–2008, COM (2007)663. Commission of the European Communities. (2007b, November 6). The former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia 2007b progress report, SEC (2007)1432. Commission of the European Communities. (2008, November 5). The former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia 2008 progress report, SEC (2008)2695 final. Commission of the European Communities. (2009, October 14). Enlargement strategy and main challenges 2009–2010, COM (2009)533. Council Decision (EC) 2004/518 on the principles, priorities and the conditions contained in the European Partnership with Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. (2004) OJ L222/20. EPI. (2016, September). Justice governance for growth monitor (JuDGMeNT), Monthly Brief. European Commission. (2016, November 9). The former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia 2016 Report, SWD (2016)362 final. European Commission. (2018, April 17). The former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia 2018 Report, SWD (2018)154 final. European Interest. (2019, May 29). European Commission: 2019 Report on North Macedonia. https://www.europeaninterest.eu/article/european-commission2019-report-north-macedonia/ The Constitution of the Republic of Macedonia [adopted on 17 November 1991]. (1992). Official Gazette of the Republic of Macedonia 1/92. The Government of the Republic of Macedonia. (2012). Report on the Implementation Status of all Policies deriving from the Ohrid Framework Agreement. Secretariat for Implementation of the Ohrid Framework Agreement. Skopje. The Law on the Official Use of Language. (2008). Official Gazette of the Republic of Macedonia 101/2008. The Ohrid Framework Agreement. (2001). https://peacemaker.un.org/sites/ peacemaker.un.org/files/MK_010813_Frameword%20Agreement%20%28O rhid%20Agreement%29.pdf

CHAPTER 9

Migration Movements and Their Implications for Macedonia Marina Andeva

Human migration comprises different events and actions, each distinctly characterized depending on different factors and features. Migration is characterized by movements by people from one place to another followed by different reasons and intentions. Migration can be voluntary or forced; internal or external; it can be for economic or family reasons, or at its worst in can be triggered by wars and terror. Migration is also distinguished by whether a person exists in one state with the intention of settling in another (emigration) or as a process by which non-nationals move into a country for the purpose of settlement (IOM, 2011). In view of the general consideration of what can constitute migration and migration movements, in an attempt to illustrate Macedonia’s position and challenges, the narrative of this chapter will be presented in three different areas. First of all, this chapter focuses on the right of the free movement of people and Macedonia’s position in the face of recent emigration issues. Subsequent to this, the discussion, on the

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effects of the migration crises for Macedonia as one of the transit countries on the Balkan route, will change the narrative towards Macedonia’s position as both a transit and a destination country. Finally, this chapter will briefly present the Macedonian legal framework in the field of illegal migration and asylum and argue whether and to what extent the country’s regulatory framework is in compliance with EU measures in specific areas.

The Right of the Free Movement of People in Macedonia With effect from 19 December 2009, citizens of the Republic of Macedonia were allowed to travel to Europe without having to apply for visas at the consular offices of EU Member States in their country or in neighbouring countries (Council of the European Union, 2009). Visa liberalization towards the Western Balkans was accompanied by concern among the member states of the EU that citizens of these countries have been ‘abusing’ the liberalization of visa restrictions and free entry to the EU for a period of time, for a particular activity or for reasons that were not provided for under national and European legislation. Member States of the EU registering a significant increase in asylum applications in 2011 have intensified calls to the governments of the Western Balkan countries on issues related to the proper management of their migration outflows and a number of bilateral and regional meetings were held regarding the matter. Pressure on countries in the region became even higher in May 2011 when the European Commission proposed a temporary suspension of visa liberalization for Serbia, Macedonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Albania and Montenegro. Under this new proposal, suspension would be possible only if a group of Member States of the EU showed an increase in the number of asylum seekers from these countries above a certain threshold (Council of Europe, 2013). On 12 September 2013, the European Parliament adopted a mechanism for the suspension of the visa regime, which allows the EU to restore the visa in emergencies (European Parliament, 2013). Various calls were made by representatives of the EU to the authorities of those countries pointing out that it was essential to take all necessary measures to reduce the number of asylum seekers, stressing that if the problem persisted, the visa liberalization process would be jeopardized and visas will be reinstated. After registering alarming figures in the Member States, the European Union

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shifted responsibility onto the governments of the Western Balkans to address the issue of asylum seekers. In her speech, Viviane Reding, Vice President of the European Commission, indicated that the Roma were the real problem confronting free movement in the EU (Romea, 2014). She stressed that all 507 million EU citizens have equal rights and added that, in the several decades of the Union’s existence, there have never been such intense attacks from politicians and the media against one of the main European rights—the right to the freedom of movement. In a different speech she specifically pointed out that: ‘free movement is a right to free circulation; it is not a right to migrate into other Member States’ social security systems’ (European Commission, 2013a). The fourth and latest report of the European Commission, which concerns the monitoring of visa liberalization for the Western Balkan countries, noted that in 2013, according to an annual analysis by Frontex, the majority of asylum seekers are Roma. In Germany, more than 80% of applicants were Roma (European Commission, 2013b). According to official information from the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Republic of Macedonia from 29 April 2011 enhanced measures and activities to prevent a large number of persons seeking asylum in Member States began to be enforced.1 In the specific case of the Republic of Macedonia, the Roma people’s right to the freedom of movement was seriously jeopardized as soon as visa liberalization entered into effect. Statistical data on the number of asylum seekers under the visa-free regime played a major role in policy-making and the political debates centred on measures for the prevention of ungrounded asylum applications, besides the fact that the rate of admissible asylum applications by Macedonian citizens, according to official data from Eurostat is very small compared with that which applies to other countries in the Western Balkans (European Commission, 2013b; Eurostat, 2014). Analysis of the method applied for rejecting ungrounded asylum applications and for returning asylum seekers reveals interesting variations among the Schengen Area Member States. In the first three months of 2013, Germany returned practically all of the asylum seekers from the Western Balkans through forced return procedures. Luxembourg proceeded almost entirely via the voluntary return track. Sweden and Belgium mainly used the voluntary track; while Switzerland used both methods in almost equal measure (European Commission, 2013b).

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In the prevention of Roma crossing the Macedonian state borders, the Republic of Macedonia’s role in the resolution of this problem should have been both direct and meaningful. The Constitution of the Republic of Macedonia guarantees equality and the freedom of movement for all citizens, while the international treaties to which the Republic of Macedonia is a signatory state clearly prohibit all types of discrimination and restriction on the freedom of movement. On the other hand, it should be noted that the European Commission’s Visa Liberalization Roadmap clearly indicates that the Republic of Macedonia should guarantee its citizens freedom of movement, which should not be burdened with unjustified restrictions and discriminatory practices, and that the Republic of Macedonia should duly investigate all cases of ethnically motivated incidents caused by police officers in regard to the freedom of movement, including practices targeting members of minority communities in Macedonia. Since 2011, Roma were frequently stopped at border crossings and denied exit without any real arguments and proof of the lack of documentation. Questions were raised whether the measures taken by the border authorities in the Republic of Macedonia perceived the citizens of the Republic of Macedonia as a potential danger to public order, legal order and the state’s security, or as a potential threat to the state’s distorted international image and its relations with the EU and its Member States. The institutions were being wisely silent, but also members of the Roma community in the Republic of Macedonia had feared speaking out openly about this problem, for a long time. Lawsuits began to fill the courts, and by the end of 2014 with the assistance of the Macedonian Young Lawyers Association (MYLA) and their project of free aid. The MYLA received the very first judgement laying down the discrimination and violation of equality in which the Ministry of Interior (MOI) appears as a defendant because it prevented the plaintiff, a person of Roma nationality, from leaving the territory acting contrary to the Law on border control and restricting his right to free movement and the right to equality (MYLA, 2016a). Within this project, the MYLA also had unsuccessful judgements which proved the constant attempt of the Macedonian courts to neglect the right of free movements of persons and the prohibition against discrimination (MYLA, 2016b).

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The Macedonian Experience of the Refugee Crisis The Republic of Macedonia faced a significant and moreover an increased number of asylum seekers coming from countries outside the Balkans and Europe after the Bosnian crisis (1992–1995) and the Kosovo war (1999). In 2008, there were 50 lodged asylum applications, followed by increases in numbers in 2009, at 90, then in 2010 with 180 asylum applications. According to UNHCR official statistical data in 2011, 740 asylum applications were submitted in front of the Section for Asylum at the Ministry of Interior as the first instance authority. The vast majority of these applications were submitted by applicants coming from the world’s most vulnerable countries such as Afghanistan (427 applications), Pakistan (172) and Somalia (53) asylum applications. This means that the annual change in 2010–2011 is 311% (UNHCR, 2011, p. 27). In 2015, the largest number of refugees and migrants who entered Europe was registered, reaching one million before the end of December. This was an outstanding period in the history of migration movements. In the middle of the so-called largest refugee crisis in the world, EU and EU Member States have been under huge pressure to resolve and tackle the challenges of the major influx coming from the southern European borders. While Hungary immediately closed its borders and Austria announced a similar action if the situation were to escalate (The Guardian, 2015), Western Balkan countries were under huge pressure. Refugees travelling from Turkey through Greece arrived at Macedonia’s southern borders. Relations between states within the EU and outside were greatly tested as they attempted to either blame their neighbours for the poor management of refugees or argued over the distribution of quotas to share the burden equally. The EU admitted in the European Agenda on Migration (released in May 2015), that emergency measures were necessary because the collective European policy on the matter had fallen short (European Commission, 2015). One of the key measures underlined in the agenda was to respond to high-volumes of arrivals within the EU by relocation or in other words ‘Member States will need to show solidarity and redouble their efforts to assist those countries on the frontline’ (European Commission, 2015, p. 4). In order to do so, the Commission proposed setting up a new ‘hotspot’ approach, where the European Asylum Support Office, Frontex and Europol would work on the ground with frontline Member States to swiftly identify, register and fingerprint

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incoming migrants. Furthermore, the Commission proposed a redistribution key based on criteria such as GDP, size of population, unemployment rates and past numbers of asylum seekers and of resettled refugees. Meanwhile, waiting for all these proposals to be set in practice and put into operation, Macedonia along with other Western Balkan countries faced the challenge of hosting and managing refugees coming from Greece. These countries formed one of the main migration routes (the so-called Balkan Route) to countries of the European Union. During the period of one year, the number of newly arrived asylum seekers who entered into Macedonia as part of the increased movement of people in mixed migratory movements dramatically increased. Asylum seekers and migrants passed through the region of Asia, Africa and the Middle East en route to Western Europe. With the continuation of the conflict in Syria, the majority of refugees who arrived in the Western Europe countries came from Syria. Most of them arrived from Turkey into Greece by sea, and continued their way to Germany, Sweden or Denmark. In early June 2015, the number of migrants and asylum seekers who arrived on the southern border with Greece varied between 300 and 500 persons daily; with the deepening of the crisis, a growing number of refugees began to arrive in Macedonia, the average daily number grew over the months, reaching only 11,072 registered on 9 November 2015 at the transit centre in Vinojug Gevgelija.2 The majority of asylum seekers saw Macedonia as a transit-country rather than as a country of final destination. This led to the practice of state institutions working more on facilitating transit, rather than improving the national asylum system. One indicator for calculating the number of people crossing Macedonia is the number of intentions to request asylum. Amendments of the Law on asylum and temporary protection in 2015, introduced the category of ‘intention to request asylum’ (Law on Asylum and Temporary Protection, 2015) and consequently, the Ministry of Interior reported regularly on the number of issued intentions to request asylum until mid-March 2016. From 19 June until 31 November 2015, 384,481 intentions were issued to foreign nationals, whereas since that date, there have only been 86 asylum requests, based on the previously issued intention (Ministry of Interior of the Republic of Macedonia, 2015a). For 2016, the Ministry reported only until mid-March. According to the Ministry, in the period between 1 January 2016 and 20 March 2016, 89,623 foreigners obtained intentions to request asylum, whereas for the same period 29 foreigners (from Syria and Afghanistan) requested asylum

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in the Republic of Macedonia (Ministry of Interior of the Republic of Macedonia, 2016). Macedonia declared an emergency situation on 19 August 2015, on the southern and northern border crossings. The Ministry of Interior at that time declared, that the Macedonian army could be involved in securing the borders. To act upon the decision of the government, the main headquarters at the Centre for Crisis Management was formed with the responsibility of preparing an action plan. The Ministry publicly announced that the increased control of the southern border was not the solution to the problem and that it was expected that soon a unique, humane response by the EU would be established, which would cover all of the countries most affected by the migrant crisis and would jointly share the burden of confronting the specific challenges (Ministry of Interior of Republic of Macedonia, 2015b). In the upcoming months, uncertainties were present with reference as to whether or not the borders would be closed or not. Since it was a situation where there was clearly a chain re-action, the possibility of closing the Macedonian borders depended upon whether or not its northern neighbour Serbia would close its borders as well. This was due to the low capacity of Macedonia to deal with and host such a huge number of refugees and migrants on its territory. The refugee crisis was filled with accusations of failures which have spread in the news, and Macedonia was among them. Macedonia’s then President Gjorge Ivanov told Germany: ‘your country has completely failed’ in its security response to the refugee crisis. He pointed out in a public interview that Macedonia, which is not a European Union member state, had seized 9,000 forged or stolen passports from refugees (Bild, 2016). While the discourse on refugees has been mixed with the discourse of potential terrorist attacks, as Ivanov pointed out, Macedonian offers to share intelligence and data on alleged jihadists has been rejected by Europe. The wide open accusations by the Macedonian president towards EU refugee management, came right after Macedonia fully closed the border with Greece (in March 2016). Macedonia has stepped up to the plate and faced up to protecting the EU borders as a non-EU, non-Schengen state. Conversely, Macedonia was accused of using the migration crisis to override its democratic commitments (Herczog, 2016). Greece accused Macedonia of ‘shaming’ Europe by using plastic bullets, stun grenades and tear gas to beat back refugees from the border fence between Macedonia and Greece (Squires, 2016).

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The media accused Macedonia of using tear gas on migrants while Italy rescued 4,000 alone in the Mediterranean (Charlton, 2016). With no real policy for refugee management and no action for overcoming the crisis, the EU’s only hope was to work with Turkey. In the European meeting in March 2016, the proposed agreement was for the EU to return migrants, who had not qualified for refugee status in Turkey, so as to alleviate the situation in Greece, in return for resettling within Europe an equal number of refugees. Then again, Turkey demanded more financial means and faster visa-free travel to Europe, in return (Euronews, 2016a). The agreement included a commitment for the EU to cooperate with Turkey in an endeavour to establish so-called safe areas inside Syria. From a broader perspective, this EU-brokered deal was criticized as an act that contradicted EU principles guaranteeing the right to seek asylum and against collective expulsion (Human Rights Watch, 2016). However, this has not stopped refugees from seeking shelter in EU countries. The International Organization for Migration (IOM) reported that as of 21 September 2016, a total of 317,228 migrants and refugees had arrived in Europe by land and sea routes since the start of 2016 (IOM, 2016a). In Macedonia the numbers have decreased. The number of migrants and refugees remaining at the reception centre in Gevgelija, on the southern border, was 131, and in Tabanovce, on the northern border, was approximately 81 (IOM, 2016b). When discussing Macedonian efforts to cooperate with neighbouring countries and other EU countries in managing the refugee crisis, it must be noted that numerous actions and efforts were taking place. In 2015, Macedonia, Serbia, Hungary and Austria signed a Memorandum for dealing with the refugee crisis, admitting it as a small but significant step towards managing the problems and challenges that were encountered (Government of the Republic of Macedonia, 2015). The Vienna summit, in September 2016, with the participation of 11 countries, along with EU representatives decided to seal off the so-called Balkan route, with a plan for the conclusion of repatriation agreements with the North African states, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Euronews correspondent Gábor Tanács reported from Vienna that: ‘countries along the Balkan route have a habit of bickering – but also of cooperating. The question is which habit will prevail as they try to handle the migrant crisis’ (Euronews, 2016b). Macedonia also participated in the summit along with other countries along the Balkan route. After a long period of hesitation, Macedonia has decided to play a decisive role in Frontex outside the EU (EU, 2016). The border

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agency was entrusted with a more comprehensive border surveillance and refugee deterrence authority and the first deployment took place within the EU, in Greece, on the borders with Macedonia and Albania.

The Macedonian Legal Framework and Its Alignment with the EU Acquis in the Field of Migration and Asylum The Stabilization and Association Process (SAP) provides the foundation upon which the countries of the Western Balkans and the European Union cooperate on policies related to migration and asylum. The contractual relationship between Macedonia and the European Commission was initiated in 2001, with the signing of the Agreement. With regard to migration, the emphasis in the Agreement was placed on the prevention and control of irregular migration as well as the readmission of nationals from other countries and stateless persons; in addition, the consultation and cooperation efforts were concentrated on assistance in drafting the necessary legislation, the best practices for controlling and protecting the borders, as well as enhancing the efficiency of the institutions charged with fighting and preventing crime and combating trafficking in human beings. The cooperation between Macedonia and the European Commission in the area of asylum was propelled towards the development and implementation of national legislation in order to meet the standards of the 1951 Geneva Convention (Council of the European Union, 2009). Furthermore, the Visa liberalization dialogue between the European Commission and Macedonia contributed immensely to further alignment with the EU acquis in the area of migration. The pursuit for membership of the EU has resulted in the adoption and implementation of the Union’s asylum acquis and as such had (and still has) a significant impact on the refugee protection regime in the Republic of Macedonia. The accession processes, however, encouraged significant advances in refugee protection in the country, thereby initiating new amendments and improvements in the Law on Asylum and Temporary Protection (LATP). In May, 2007 in the light of the need to harmonize LATP with the 2004 Qualification Directive, the first amendments introduced subsidiary protection and defined a person under subsidiary protection; further introducing four more cessation clauses (death, acquisition of citizenship, acquisition of a residence permit and

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voluntary departure from the territory of the Republic of Macedonia), which were fortunately erased by the 2009 Amendments of the LATP. In October, 2008, another law was passed amending the LATP—the term ‘person under humanitarian protection’ was replaced with the term ‘person under subsidiary protection’, followed by changes made in the applicant’s right to use the appropriate remedy—namely the possibility of an administrative dispute against the decisions of the first instance authority in front of a competent court. In December 2009, the third and most important amendments of the LATP were introduced: Article 9-a ‘First country of asylum’ based on Article 26.1 of the Procedures Directive; Article 24.2 of the Qualification Directive envisages that a residence permit for persons under subsidiary protection must be valid for at least one year and this provision was incorporated in Article 58 of the LATP. The fourth paragraph of Article 32 LATP was deleted, and Article 35 was amended (Smilevska, 2012). As stated above, the LATP was amended in 2015 introducing the term ‘intention to request asylum’ and in 2016 another amendment introduced the category ‘third safe country’ (Law on Asylum and Temporary Protection, 71/2016). On a policy level in 2009, the Assembly adopted a 5-year strategic policy document indicating the state of affairs, problems and measures regarding migration management, including irregular migration. The Resolution on Migration Policy 2009–2014 consequently determines the principles, elements, criteria and presumptions of migration policy, as well as the migration processes and return policy in Macedonia. The Republic of Macedonia is implementing the National Strategy for combating trafficking in human beings and illegal migration 2013–2016 in order to comply with EU directive 2011/36/EU which sets out minimum standards in preventing and combating trafficking in human beings and protecting victims. The alignment with the EU acquis has been a slow process for Macedonia showing some successful results. Macedonia has shown its commitment in applying a comprehensive legal framework in the area of irregular migration legislation, and in taking a concrete step in fully transposing the directives into national legislation. In spite of the country’s evidenced progress towards overall compliance, Macedonia is still only partially compatible with the EU acquis in the area of irregular migration (Andeva & Necev, 2016).

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Concluding Remarks The Dublin System (1990, 2003 and 2013) provides the cornerstone of the Common European Asylum System. It is constituted by the Dublin and Eurodac Regulations (2003), and their implementing provisions. It standardizes the criteria and mechanisms for determining the responsibility of Member States for examining an asylum application and establishes an EU asylum fingerprint database. When discussing Macedonia’s alignment in this specific field, it is important to underline that the implementation of the Dublin system requires full membership in the EU and is therefore only applicable once Macedonia actually becomes a Member State of the European Union. Therefore, the accession process greatly serves as a preparatory period for full harmonization with these Regulations. In spite of this, a few other important remarks on the Macedonian asylum framework can be highlighted. The necessary legal framework for establishing a national database for foreigners, covering data on asylum, migration and visas was provided by the Law on foreigners in 2010. Also, the LATP and accompanying subordinate legislation are the main sources to be taken into consideration when assessing Macedonia’s level of compliance with the EU asylum acquis. The LATP contained an entire chapter devoted to the temporary protection of persons in the event of a mass influx of migrants and refugees. In such events, according to Art. 62, the Government of Macedonia may grant temporary protection to persons coming directly from a state where their life, safety or freedom have been threatened by war, civil war, occupation and internal conflict linked with violence or the mass violation of human rights. This is of course, in line with the 1951 Geneva Convention relating to the status of refugees to which Macedonia is a signatory party, furthermore this proves that Macedonia has taken into consideration such measures from a legal point of view, and the country has provisions which establish and cover massive influx events. The right to temporary protection is also covered by the law. Taking into consideration the frequent changes and revision of the asylum acquis at an EU level; Macedonian legislation has to a great extent complied with EU standards and regulation primarily in the policy areas of common procedures for granting international protection, determining refugee status, temporary protection and reception conditions (Andeva & Necev, 2016). Other policies and measures related to common

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databases and sharing the burden of responsibility are only applicable for discussion once Macedonia joins the EU family. Over the years, Macedonia has also been challenged to seek measures and extra-curricular solutions for dealing with the prevention of asylum applications to the EU from its own citizens, by clearly not respecting their rights and discriminating against citizens on the basis of race. Such an act has been largely triggered by the measures and actions made by the EU Member States. The EU and its Member States could have disposed with mechanisms that could prevent the occurrence of so-called false asylum seekers, without having to transfer the responsibility to the Western Balkans by issuing recommendations and imposing terms and conditions that they need to fulfil. Instead, the Western Balkans, and especially, Macedonia have confronted the challenge to limit the free movement of its own citizens. Nevertheless, these conclusions exclusively concern relations between the EU and the Western Balkans. The significant increase in the number of migrants transiting Macedonia in addition to the migrant crisis in which numbers and politics have constantly been altered has been the main cause of many concerns among EU Member States and the Western Balkan countries over the past two years. This complex state of play posed a threat to the effective implementation and operationalization of policies especially on the occasion of a massive influx of migrants. Especially for transit countries such as Macedonia, which is in the process of transposing the acquis communautaire in the area of irregular migration and asylum as part of Chapter 24 of the accession negotiations. Ineffectiveness in the implementation of the relevant acquis has been evident recently when the Macedonian authorities had to seek extra-curricular solutions for dealing with the increased migrant flow outside existing community legislation. The path of refugees and the management of migrants in Macedonia has not been laidback. Macedonian citizens have shown great hospitality and charity; numerous voluntary organizations assisted by funds from the UNHCR, and other governmental institutions have tried to minimize the impact of the large number of migrants on its territory. The Centre for Crisis Management has also played a significant role in in-field operations.3 The increased flow of migrants coming to Europe and passing through the Republic of Macedonia has filled the daily news with many debates and discussions, which often go in different directions and create misunderstandings and misinterpretations over the situation at hand. Macedonia joined the crises debate since the middle of August 2015, with the sudden

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increased influx of migrants on its territory. Such a significant number has considerably influenced the perceptions of Macedonian society, with strong feelings and reactions against migration as a phenomenon, and the actions which consequently come along. Macedonian society was not immune to witnessing prejudices, fears and various information and facts as a result of such developments (Najcevska, 2015), however, the country has managed to stay calm despite the external and internal political factors in place. Meanwhile, Macedonia has continued to put a lot of effort into aligning its legislation with the EU acquis , limited to its financial and operational capacities.

Notes 1. Information was retrieved using a request for access to public information submitted on 21 February 2014 for the purposes of a study funded by the USAID programme as part of a project for civil society conducted by Dr. Marina Andeva as research fellow at the Macedonian Centre for European Training in 2014. 2. Numbers are estimates. Sources: interviews with volunteers on field from the Macedonian Young Lawyers Association. 3. Information obtained from a panel discussion organized by the University American College Skopje, on 5 October 2016 entitled ‘Refugees, migrants, terrorists? Dealing with facts and prejudices’ where representatives from government institutions and civil society organizations discussed the most important questions and issues in dealing with the current refugee crisis in Macedonia.

References Andeva, M., & Necev, Z. (2016). Macedonia’s compliance with EU policies and regulations for irregular migration and asylum. Proceedings of the Conference ‘Challenges of Contemporary Society’. Institute for Sociological, Political and Juridical Research. Bild. (2016). Macedonian president settles a score here. http://www.bild.de/pol itik/ausland/gjorge-ivanov/macedonian-president-settles-a-score-here-448 88176.bild.html. Accessed 1 November 2016. Charlton, C. (2016). Europe’s refugee crisis rumbles on: Macedonia uses tear gas on migrants trying to pull down border fence while Italy rescues 4,000 in the Mediterranean in the past two days—Sparking fears of ‘alarming’ rise in

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illegal sea crossings. The Daily Mail. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art icle-3537705/Europe-s-refugee-crisis-rumbles-Macedonia-uses-tear-gas-mig rants-trying-pull-border-fence-Italy-rescues-4-000-Mediterranean-past-twodays-sparking-fears-alarming-rise-illegal-sea-crossings.html#ixzz4PnirDBcg. Accessed 2 September 2016. Council of Europe. (2013). Report by Nils Muižnieks, Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, following his visit to the ‘former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia’, from 26 to 29 November 2012, CommDH(2013)4. Council of the European Union. (2009, November 30). Visa liberalisation for Western Balkan countries, 16640/09 (Presse 349). http://www.consilium. europa.eu/uedocs/cms_data/docs/pressdata/en/jha/111561.pdf EU. (2016, September 16). Regulation (EU) 2016/1624 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 14 September 2016 on the European Border and Coast Guard and amending Regulation (EU) 2016/399 of the European Parliament and of the Council and repealing Regulation (EC) No 863/2007 of the European Parliament and of the Council, Council Regulation (EC) No 2007/2004 and Council Decision 2005/267/EC, Official Journal of the European Union. Euronews. (2016a). EU leaders claim ‘breakthrough’ at migration summit but details need more work. http://www.euronews.com/2016a/03/08/eu-lea ders-claim-breakthrough-at-migration-summit-but-details-need-more-work. Accessed 12 November 2016. Euronews. (2016b). ‘Balkan route’ leaders meet in Vienna to tackle migration crisis. http://www.euronews.com/2016b/09/24/balkan-route-leadersmeet-in-vienna-to-tackle-migration-crisis. Accessed 12 November 2016. European Commission. (2013a). Speech—Free movement: Vice-President Reding’s intervention at the December Justice and Home Affairs Council. http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_SPEECH-13-1025_en.htm. Accessed 12 November 2016. European Commission. (2013b, November 28). Report from the Commission to the European Parliament and the Council, Fourth Report on the Post-Visa Liberalisation Monitoring for the Western Balkan Countries in accordance with the Commission Statement of 8 November 2010, COM(2013) 836 final. European Commission. (2015, May 13). Communication from the Commission to the European Parliament, the Council, the European Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the regions: A European Agenda on Migration, COM(2015) 240 final. European Parliament. (2013, September 12). Parliament backs rules allowing suspension of visa-free travel only as a last resort. Press release. http://www. europarl.europa.eu/news/en/news-room/20130910IPR19556/ep-backsrules-allowing-suspension-of-visa-free-travel-only-as-a-last-resort. Accessed 3 September 2016.

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Eurostat. (2014). Asylum applicants and first instance decisions on asylum applications: 2013. Issue number 3/2014. Government of the Republic of Macedonia. (2015). Macedonia, Serbia, Austria and Hungary signed Memorandum for dealing with the refugee crisis. Press release. http://vlada.mk/node/11065. Accessed 2 September 2016. Herczog, E. (2016). Europe can’t afford to be blackmailed by Macedonia. Politico. http://www.politico.eu/article/europe-blackmailed-macedo nia-refugee-crisis-balkan-route-greece/. Accessed 10 November 2016. Human Rights Watch. (2016). EU/Turkey: Mass, fast-track returns threaten rights. https://www.hrw.org/news/2016/03/08/eu/turkey-mass-fast-trackreturns-threaten-rights. Accessed 15 September 2016. IOM. (2011). Glossary on migration. International Migration Law Series 25. IOM. (2016a, September 22). Situation report. IOM. (2016b, August 11). Situation Report. Law on Amending the Law on Asylum and Temporary Protection. (2015). Official Gazette of the Republic of Macedonia 1/2015 from 18 June 2015. Law on Amending the Law on Asylum and Temporary Protection. (2016). Official Gazette of the Republic of Macedonia 71/2016 from 11 April 2016. Law on Amending the Law on Foreigners. (2010). Official Gazette of the Republic of Macedonia 156/2010 from 6 December 2010. Ministry of Interior of the Republic of Macedonia. (2015a, December 31). Press release. http://www.mvr.gov.mk/vest/1193. Accessed 1 October 2016. Ministry of Interior of the Republic of Macedonia. (2015b, August 20). Zasileno obezbeduvanje na juzhnata i severnata granica. Press release. http://www. mvr.gov.mk/vest/299. Accessed 1 September 2016. Ministry of Interior of the Republic of Macedonia. (2016, March 21). Press release. http://www.mvr.gov.mk/vest/1648. Accessed 1 October 2016. MYLA. (2016a). Donesena pozitivna presuda za povreda na pravo na ednakvost i povreda na sloboda na dvizhenje [Decision on violation of the right to equality and a violation of freedom of movement]. http://myla.org.mk/donecena-poz itivna-ppecyda-za-povped/. Accessed 31 August 2016a. MYLA. (2016b). Studija na sluchaj: X.X. protiv Ministerstvoto za vnatreshni raboti na RM [Case study: X.X. against Ministry of Interior of the Republic of Macedonia]. http://myla.org.mk/x-x-. Accessed 1 October 2016. Najcevska, M. (2015). Begalci, migrant i ksenfobija vo makedonskite mediumi [Refugees, migrants and xenophobia in the Macedonian media]. http://nemrazi.mk/begaltsi-migranti-i-ksenofobija-vo-makedonskitemediumi/. Accessed 12 November 2016. Romea. (2014). Vivian Reding: The real problem of free movement are the Roma. Speech. http://www.romea.cz/en/news/world/viviane-reding-thereal-problem-of-free-movement-are-the-roma. Accessed 12 November 2016.

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Smilevska, M. (2012). Trends in asylum-seeking in light of Macedonia’s accession processes in the European Union. EU policy brief . Konrad Adenauer Stiftung. Squires, N. (2016). Refugee crisis: Greek PM accuses Macedonia of ‘shaming’ Europe. The Telegraph. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/04/11/ greek-officials-condemn-macedonians-for-use-of-force-after-300-r/. Accessed 5 November 2016. The Guardian. (2015). Austria plans to close border as refugee crisis grows. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/06/austria-close-borderrefugee-crisis-europe-munich-migrants. Accessed 5 September 2016. UNHCR. (2011). Asylum levels and trends in industrialized countries: Statistical overview of asylum applications lodged in Europe and selected non-European countries. http://www.unhcr.org/statistics/unhcrstats/4e9beaa19/asylumlevels-trends-industrialized-countries-2011-statistical-overview.html. Accessed 10 November 2016.

CHAPTER 10

The Identity Shift: Claims on Antiquity in Macedonian Fiction and Drama Ivan Dodovski

Just two kilometres from the centre of Bitola, my place of birth, there is an archaeological site called Heraclea Lyncestis. This was an ancient city established by King Philip II of Macedon in the middle of the fourth century BC. As a journalist, my father occasionally reported about the excavations at Heraclea in the 1980s, and once he took me there to show me the site. What stands out in my memory of this visit were the concluding comments of the local guide in Heraclea. In an effort to give a summary of a complicated history to a young schoolboy like me, he said that Heraclea was an ancient city which had suffered a terrible earthquake and was later finished off by the Slavs, who built their huts on its ruined theatre and mosaics. I was also told that we, the Macedonians, are Slavs, and so we have little in common with this ancient legacy. Only after a decade could I critically reflect on the effort of my guide to underline a discontinuity in the history of my birth town and its people.

I. Dodovski (B) University American College Skopje, Skopje, North Macedonia e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 R. Hudson and I. Dodovski (eds.), Macedonia’s Long Transition, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-20773-0_9

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To minimise the importance of ancient Macedonian history, on the one hand, and to celebrate the Slavonic origin of the Macedonians, on the other hand, was the principal characteristic of the officially sanctioned discourse in the Socialist Republic of Macedonia. The definition of the Macedonians as a separate ethnic group of South Slavonic descent could perfectly fit into the Yugoslav project of ‘brotherhood and unity’ under Tito. However, with the breakup of the Yugoslav Federation, some Macedonians embarked upon a new definition of their ethno-genesis: while still claiming an amalgamation of ancient Macedonian and Slavonic roots, the emphasis shifted upon the former, rather than the latter—as it was defined until the 1990s. When I took a foreign guest to Heraclea in 2007, I found there a friend of mine from high school employed as a new guide. Conspicuously, there was no mention of the Slavs in his narrative. Instead, what my guest heard was a story of the local Lynx tribe from which an ancestral line stems leading to the mother of King Philip II of Macedon. In this paper, I consider some of the causes that gave rise to this revised narrative of Macedonian national identity. I also illustrate its literary and theatrical refractions by analysing one novel and two theatre plays which had a wide reception among the Macedonian public.

The Return of Antiquity The ‘return of Antiquity’ at the expense of inhibited Slavonic origin is not a solely Macedonian phenomenon. It has a wider currency and sundry causes. Firstly, the Western projection of barbarous Slavs (Lavrin, 1969, pp. 40–56, 143–161) and the messianic aspect of nineteenth-century Russian Slavophilism with its idea of panslavonic unity under Russian dominance (Erickson, 1964; Kohn, 1953) made it politically incorrect to celebrate a shared Slavonic origin in the 1990s when South Slavonic nations aspired for integration into the European Union. Instead, there was an increasing interest in the pre-Slavonic ancient past with an aim of portraying the nation as distinct, autochthonous, civilised and therefore European par excellence. Secondly, the fall of communism opened the way to revisions of history. New narratives emerged which perfectly suited national imaginings, according to the principle ‘the older, the better’. For instance, in Croatia the Iranian theory of ethno-genesis re-emerged in the 1990s amidst the nationalist drive of distancing the Croats from any association with the Balkan Slavs, particularly the Serbs (Heres, 1981, ´ c, 1991; Marˇcinko, 2000; Tomˇci´c & republished in Babi´c, 1992; Curi´

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Lovri´c, 1999; Vidovi´c, 1991).1 Likewise, according to the Venetological theory which re-emerged in the mid-1980s, the Slovenes are not Slavs but direct descendants of the proto-Slavonic Venets, an indigenous pre-Christian European population whose distinct heritage is claimed to have left an important imprint on many European nations (Šavli et al., 1996).2 Comparable reconsiderations were paid both to proto-Bulgar and to Thracian legacies in Bulgaria (Dimitrova, 1996). The traditional view of the Turkic origin of the proto-Bulgars has been defied by Petar Dobrev (1991, 1994, 2004), who insists on their Sarmatian or Iranian origin. Thracian history was extensively researched by late Alexander Fol (in English, see Fol et al., 2000). In Bosnia and Herzegovina, a professor of history at the University of Sarajevo championed the idea that the Bosnians are an autochthonous people of Illyro-Romanian descent who accepted a Slavonic tongue but preserved their ethnic individuality which distinguishes them from the ‘new-comer’ Serbs and Croats (Imamovic, 1995, 1998). In Montenegro, claims were made that Montenegrins are not Slavs but descendants of ancient Illyrians (Rotkovi´c, 1992). Although Serbs for the most part tend to recycle medieval symbols of nationbuilding, there are a few publications which depict them as the oldest people in the world—some original Slavs who came from northern India around 5000 BC bringing civilisation to the European continent (Lukovi´c-Pjanovi´c, 1990; Dragi´c Kijuk, 1992).3 Another Serbian author tried to argue that Alexander the Great was in fact a Serb (Dereti´c, 1996, 2000). Then again, there are important contextual details which explain how these ideas gain academic reception (e.g. in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Bulgaria) or remain marginal to mainstream historiography (like in Serbia or Slovenia). The Macedonian case deserves an adequate contextualisation, as well.

Defensive ‘Anticomania’, Corruptive Entourage? Throughout the twentieth century, Macedonian identity was contested in different ways, and Bulgarian and Greek denials do not cease even to date. Bulgaria was the first country to recognise Macedonia after it declared independence from Yugoslavia in 1991, but it continues to deny the distinctiveness of the Macedonian language and the existence of Macedonian national identity as such. At the same time, Greece made a claim that it has an exclusive ownership right to the name Macedonia

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and continued to deny any attribute of ethnic Macedonian identity. Pressured by the embargo imposed by Greece, Macedonia made concessions in 1995, agreeing to change its flag—the sixteen-ray sun—a royal symbol of the ancient Macedonian dynasty, and to discuss the difference over the name issue under the auspices of the United Nations. Despite the interim agreement, in 2008 Greece vetoed Macedonia’s bid to join NATO and continued to block the country’s integration into the European Union insisting that the Macedonians must change their name. The situation was not resolved until the renaming of the country in January 2019, following the signing of the Prespa Agreement the previous year. Along with its efforts to counter the denials of its neighbours, Macedonia experienced an internal crisis. In 2001, the National Liberation Army (NLA), an ethnic Albanian extremist organisation, took over parts of the territory of western Macedonia and threatened to instigate a civil war. The interethnic armed conflict was brought to a halt with the signing of the Ohrid Framework Agreement. Ethnic Macedonians had to abandon their idea of a mono-ethnic nation-state. The amended Constitution gave a new definition of statehood and delegated substantial power to the ethnic Albanians who comprised slightly more than 25% of the population. These contextual facts can help us to understand the emergence of a new Macedonian nationalism. The ‘claim on Antiquity’ appears to be a result of post-Yugoslav and post-communist revisions of the past which endeavour to provide new responses to old controversies or simply aim to bolster the nation-building process in a new geopolitical context. The national narrative which focuses on the ancient Macedonian heritage seems to meet a twofold need: to create legitimacy vis-à-vis adverse neighbours and to ease the sense of prolonged internal instability. What started as a growing interest in ancient history suppressed in Yugoslav times, by 2008, was turned into an official ‘social engineering’ of Macedonian identity through education, media, and public life. The ‘anticomania’ (often referred to as ‘antiquisation’) ostensibly culminated in the controversial ‘Skopje 2014’ project.4 The latter involved massive (re)construction of the city centre of the Macedonian capital, with new buildings and copious sculptures of which the monument of Alexander the Great (officially entitled ‘Warrior on a Horse’ to circumvent Greek objections) dominates the main city square with its 22-metre height.5 Nonetheless, the appeal of ‘anticomania’ can be traced much earlier. Macedonian folklore includes a meagre total of ‘six legends and a single

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song’ referring to Alexander the Great (Penushliski, 1996, p. 36). Still, translations of the medieval popular novel Alexandrida have most likely been the source of inspiration for several nineteenth-century writers who upheld the myth of Alexander III as a national hero, though conspicuously ascribing to him a Slavonic descent (Jakimovska Toši´c & Martinovska, 2013). This Romanticist anachronism is most evident in the poem ‘Samovila makedonska’ [Macedonian Fairy] by Gjorgija Pulevski and in his Slavo-Macedonian General History of 1893 (Pulevski, 2003). But, these impulses seem silenced after the Balkan Wars and the partition of Ottoman Macedonia, and especially after the inclusion of the Macedonia of ASNOM into the Yugoslav Federation. One author suggests that the crisis foreboded with the 1974 Yugoslav Constitution forced a generation of young Macedonians sent to graduate studies at Western universities to search for a new national narrative which would win Western sympathies for an independent Macedonia once Tito and his Federation were gone; however, what seemed a pragmatic national vision in the 1970s came as a troubling spectre in the 1990s and 2000s (Kostovski, 2014). The interest in the ancient past, especially in the iconic figure of Alexander the Great, has been amplifying among the Macedonian public in commensuration with the escalating ‘name issue’ with Greece. Within a decade of Macedonia’s independence, at least ten histories and popular books related to Alexander the Great had been translated into Macedonian and put into a wider circulation along with many titles written by Macedonian authors (Mojsieva Gusheva, 2014). Among the latter is the former high Yugoslav official and professor of international law at Skopje University Vasil Tupurkovski, whose books on the history of ancient Macedonia attained mass readership (Tupurkovski, 1993; 1994; 1995a; 1995b; 1999). He champions the ambition of King Alexander III to create a universal state as a guarantor of peace and human prosperity. Moreover, he sees King Alexander’s ideas of tolerance and multiculturalism as a genuine Macedonian legacy that gains significance in the era of globalisation. Established Macedonian historiography does not deny the Slavonic dimension of the Macedonian nation but insists on a gradual amalgamation of ancient Macedonians and Macedonian Slavs. In this process, the latter have imposed their language, but the former have passed on many aspects of their culture, especially their Christian faith and the name of their country.6 The fact is, however, that the official history book prior to 1991 (Antoljak et al., 1969) included some 20 pages dedicated to

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the period of Antiquity, whereas a more recent edition (Panov, 2000) expands to 200 pages on the matter. Moreover, Macedonian historians refute the Greek exclusivist claim by stressing the distinctiveness of ancient Macedonians whose language, religion, customs and political structures were different from those of the Greeks (Proeva, 1997; Slaveska, 1992). (A recent interpretation, that Slavs are not newcomers to the Balkans, but native ancient Macedonians who have been mistakenly renamed and misrepresented in Western historiography, remains exterior to the official discourse.) Some scholars agree that the ‘return to Antiquity’ emerges as a defensive response to Greek nationalism (Atanasov, 2012) or more generally to Albanian panillyrism, Greek panhellenism and Bulgarian panthracism as vying nationalist policies (Proeva, 2010). Nade Proeva, professor of ancient history at Skopje University, deems this ‘an example of how historical myths can sometimes ‘inspire’ a new national myth as a response to the denial of national identity by the neighbours; its aim is to preserve both the national identity and the political state for which, having had it for almost half a century, within the Yugoslav federation, the Macedonians have to defend all over again’ (Proeva, 2010, p. 219). Asked by The Guardian to comment on the two decades of Greek obstructions, a former Macedonian Minister of Foreign Affairs suggested that the plan to erect the monument of Alexander is ‘our way of saying [up yours]’ to the Greeks; he went on to clarify: ‘Alexander the Great, in fact, had no passport or birth certificate … This project is about asserting Macedonia’s identity at a time when it is under threat because of the name issue. We all live in a geographic area where we share a common past but our attitude towards history is inclusive. The Greeks’ is exclusive’ (Smith, 2011).7 Branislav Sarkanjac, Macedonian philosopher and one of the alleged ideologues of the claims on Antiquity within the national conservative party VMRO-DPMNE, has called for ‘a guerrilla war’ of recruiting prominent foreign and domestic scientists who would champion the Macedonian narrative vis-à-vis privileged Greek views (Sarkanjac, 2006). Others have also suggested that Alexander the Great can be a focal point of unification for a divided society dominated by ethnic Macedonians and Albanians. For instance, an influential Orthodox metropolitan has advocated that ‘the Macedonian identity … is inseparably linked to the idea of Alexander of Macedon and to ancient Macedonia’; while Sts. Cyril and Methodius and Sts. Clement and Naum of Ohrid are ‘mainly part of

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the vertical-eschatological dimension of the Christian Orthodox identity of the Macedonian people’, Alexander the Great appears to be the chief ‘horizontal’ axis; moreover, concludes this bishop, Alexander can be ‘not only an ethnic, but a civic idea of identification’ (Naum, 2011). Indeed, while opposing the ‘Skopje 2014’ project, many ethnic Albanians have not objected to the monument of Alexander being erected on the main city square; they claim him as an Albanian hero due to the alleged Illyrian descent of his mother. Likewise, some members of the Vlach community see themselves as descendants of Alexander the Great and so find the revisionist tendency acceptable (Stefanoski, 2005). Then again, critics argue that ‘anticomania’ and ‘Skopje 2014’ have deepened the interethnic rifts in the country (Koteska, 2014). Furthermore, the revisionist discourse has created a perilous ‘intra-Macedonian cleavage’ pushing the ethnic Macedonians to take a stance on either the Slavonic or ancient Macedonian definition of their identity (Vangelov, 2017). For Ljubcho Georgievski, Macedonian Prime Minister from 1998 to 2002, the ‘state engineering’ of ‘antiquisation’ means a ‘return to polytheism and paganism’; in an open letter to the Synod of the Macedonian Orthodox Church in 2012, he calls upon the bishops to relinquish their ‘poltroon attitude towards authorities’ and publicly repent, ‘seeking forgiveness from St. Clement for their three-year life as apostates from his legacy’ (Georgievski, 2012). Finally, some detect a third dimension to this phenomenon, alleging that it provides a grand ideological camouflage for the otherwise corruptive agenda of the ruling elite (Dimitrov, 2016). To be exact, government investments in ‘Skopje 2014’ were initially estimated at 80 million euros. However, an investigative journalist report documents over 684 million euros of public money spent on over 137 objects of which 34 monuments and 39 sculptures (Prizma, 2018). Suspected crimes related to this project were being probed by the Special Prosecutor’s Office established in September 2015 (Miloshevska, 2018).

Literary and Theatrical Refractions of Identity The literary scene seems to exhibit the ‘claim on Antiquity’ phenomenon in a strangely refracted fashion.8 Modern Macedonian authors showed hardly any interest in ancient Macedonian topics until the 1990s when fiction and poetry books about Alexander the Great began to multiply. One study documents some 128 works (poems, short stories, novels,

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plays, and literary essays) written between 1984 and 2010 which mention the famed ancient Macedonian king (Mladenoski, 2016).9 The most prominent among these works seems to be the prize-winning novel Alexander and Death (Aleksandar i smrtta, 1992) by the late professor of South Slavonic Literature at Skopje University Slobodan Mickovikj. As the title might suggest, the author takes as a theme the aftermath of King Alexander’s death. The story is told retrospectively by Archideus, an armourer to the famous Macedonian conqueror and his close aide since adolescence. He writes to their former teacher Aristotle in an attempt to explain—more to himself than to the philosopher—the sense of meaninglessness and the frailty of human endeavours. Mickovikj hints at differences between ancient Macedonians and Greeks although this remains outside the thematic focus. For instance, Archideus informs us that Alexander is ‘from the tribe of common Macedonians who are still barbarians to the Hellenes despite being their masters’ (Mickovikj, 1992, p. 13). However, the narration of Archideus does not reveal a favourable image of King Alexander. Minute naturalistic details about the mummification of the king’s body are conveyed in parallel with constant questioning of the destruction inflicted by his ambition for global conquest. Moreover, the specific narrative strategy seems to suggest that an imagined authority like King Alexander the Great provides only a delusive sense of safety and meaning. Namely, the narrator Archideus, who has remained silent all his life in the shadow of his master, seems to demonstrate that one can freely speak about the meaning of life only after he has seen the twilight of his nation’s idol. Symbolically, the protracted funeral procession does not end in reverence towards Alexander but with the burning of his cadaver as former followers steadily disperse. Notwithstanding the attention this novel received, critics agree that it does not promote but ‘desacralises the myth’ of Alexander as ‘a cosmopolitan, liberator, noble king, unifier of peoples and cultures’ (Mladenoski, 2016, p. 225). The novel reveals a ‘crisis of identity’ and ‘radical scepticism towards the grand ideological systems’ (Sheleva, 1994, p. 489). In a postmodern key, the image of Alexander as a source of national emancipation is reconsidered rather than legitimised (Avramovska, 1997). Two celebrated theatre performances more directly refract recent identity politics in Macedonia. The spectacle Macedoine—Odyssey 2001, a joint production of several companies, opened the international Ohrid Summer Festival in July 2001. This was only weeks away from the signing of the Ohrid Framework Agreement, while the fighting was still going on.

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The premiere took place in the ancient Ohrid amphitheatre, which at the same time was inaugurated as a newly reconstructed archaeological monument and theatre venue. Prior to the performance, both the Macedonian Minister of Culture and the European Union Special Envoy to Macedonia gave long speeches. It was a moment of pride: Macedonia was re-discovering its ancient heritage, interpreting it as a generous contribution to a united Europe. The performance itself followed the same interpretative pattern. It was envisaged as a journey through Macedonian history to the present, depicting a long and dramatic struggle from denial to glory. The script was a patchwork of texts, legends, historic figures, and events which marked the collective consciousness of the people living in Macedonia—from Alexander the Great to the gory destruction of Tito’s Yugoslavia. The audience in Ohrid, numbering more than three thousand, coming, almost all, from different parts of the country and perhaps comprising predominately middle-class men and women, reacted to the stage representations in an ambiguous, if not contradictory way. For instance, there was an audible shout of appreciation when the old flag—the sixteen-pointed sun—was displayed over the entire stage. By the end of the performance, however, this very same audience mesmerised by its national identification with ancient symbols demonstrated nostalgia for the Yugoslav identity pattern. It started with the Yugoslav anthem in mumbled tones but went on with a collective recital of musical refrains from the ex-YU pop scene. Thus, somewhat ironically, the title befitted the effect given that the French word Macédoine refers to a type of salad with various fruits; so too the performance was a mixture of national pathos, bits of history, humour and, naturally, a politically correct appeal (Dodovski, 2012). In April 2009, another performance received wider, if mainly political attention. The play Alexander (2005) was staged at the Dramski theatre in Skopje by the author himself, Ljubisha Georgievski. He was a prominent theatre director and professor at the Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Skopje, former presidential candidate, former president of the Macedonian Parliament and former ambassador of Macedonia to Sofia and to Belgrade, who published several plays while in office. The play Alexander, as the subtitle reads, is ‘an agony in six scenes’ which exhibit the mental unrest of Alexander of Macedon. His mother Olympia and his teacher Aristotle appear as shadows of the subconscious in the nightmarish dreams of Alexander. She appears as an incarnation of the Dionysian principle, convincing him that he is destined to become a god and reconcile

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Europe and Asia. On the other hand, Aristotle inculcates Alexander to use the power of reason as a means of spreading Hellenic civilisation. These two forces battle in Alexander’s dreams, manipulating his tragic hubris for conquest. Georgievski does not portray a mythical hero, but a person who struggles to reconcile the binary oppositions of dream and reality, myth and truth, superstition and wisdom. Moreover, the play mounts many ironic comments about the greediness, crudity and disunity of the Macedonians. In the stage version of 2005, there was also a striking scene in which King Alexander put his head in the place of the sun on the Macedonian flag assuming the role of a fool. Still, Georgievski plays on the thin ice of recent identity politics. For example, there are clear indications within the text that the language used by the Macedonians is distinct and therefore incomprehensible to the Greeks. Moreover, we learn that Klit, a close friend of King Alexander and his official scrivener, writes accounts of the conquest in two languages—Greek and Macedonian—and eventually destroys the Macedonian version, which seems to purport why in world history ancient Macedonians have been conflated with Greeks. Like the other characters in this play, Alexander is undoubtedly Macedonian by birth and speaks Greek only because he has accepted Greek schooling and culture. A key scene, however, is the one in which Aristotle acknowledges that he too understands the Macedonian language because it is his mother tongue. Born in Stagira as a Macedonian, he says, I became Greek by choice because one cannot be a Macedonian in Athens. While Alexander accuses his former teacher of national betrayal, the philosopher scolds his former disciple that the latter has learned nothing about the achievements of the global world and civilisation, and so remains blinded by tribalism. Identity, as Georgievski’s Aristotle seems to suggest, is what we ourselves construct, opening ourselves to the world by our own choice, rather than some essence which we necessarily inherit with birth (Dodovski, 2018).

Conclusion To conclude, I find the ‘claim on Antiquity’ curiously refracted in contemporary Macedonian literature and theatre. On the one hand, the examples that I analysed signal an increased interest in the ancient Macedonian legacy and convey some aspects of the post-Yugoslav revisionist discourse. On the other hand, they often reveal a postmodern approach to the

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national narrative and resist the temptation of mythologising the past and its heroes. We should not, however, underestimate the impact of these literary and theatrical productions. Placed in the proper political context, they resonate with a specific tendency in the 1990s which morphs into a social engineering of serious consequences in the 2000s and beyond. A ‘genie from the bottle’ has been released, and it seems unrealistic to evade its caprices. To recall my initial story about Heraclea, I would be happy to find a guide there who can speak about this ancient Macedonian city without the inhibitions of Yugoslav times or the imperatives stemming from current disputes. To see this come true, however, might take a generation or two.

Notes 1. The thesis finds unbalanced reflection in some Western historiographies, too. For example, Noel Malcolm (1996, pp. 7–8) avers that both Serbs and Croats were Slavonic tribes ruled by Iranian elites, and that the Ustasha regime during World War II denied Iranian ancestry to the Serbs and reserved it solely for the Croats since ‘ancient Iranians stood higher in the Nazi racial hierarchy than mere Slavs’. 2. A critique of the Venetological theory can be found in Skrbiš (2002). 3. A critique of this tendency can be found in Radi´c (2005). 4. On alleged inadequacy or tendentious misuse of the term ‘antiquisation’, see Kletnikov (2018). 5. For critical responses to the ‘Skopje 2014’ project, see Koteska (2014), Ahmeti (2016), Nonevski (2017), and Georgievska Jakovleva (2017). 6. See, for example: Macedonia and its relations with Greece. Skopje: MANU (1993). This book was commissioned by the Macedonian Academy of Science and Arts as a special project of its Council for Research into Southeastern Europe with an aim to provide an official Macedonian response to the Greek claim. 7. The minister subsequently denied the wording, suggesting that he spoke of expressing ‘impudence’ to defy Greek denials. See Dimeska (2011). 8. On the visual arts scene, see Alagjozovski (2012). 9. This study mentions a total of 176 titles including folklore, medieval, nineteenth-, twentieth- and twenty-first-century works.

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Nonevski, V. (2017). Izgubeni vo prikaznata: Skopje 2014 i delegitimacijata na makedonskiot nacionalen mit. In S. Stojmenska Elzeser, M. Jakimovska Toshikj, & S. Trajanova (Eds.), Kritika i molk: chitanje na makedonskata literatura i kultura (pp. 394–403). Institute of Macedonian Literature. Panov, P. (Ed.). (2000). Istorija na makedonskiot narod, vol. I: Makedonija od praistoriskoto vreme do potpagjanjeto pod turska vlast (1371 godina). Institut za nacionalna istorija. Penushliski, K. (1996). Mitot i folklorot – razgled na motivi. Zumpres. Prizma. (2018, January 1). Skopje 2014 pod lupa. http://skopje2014.prizma. birn.eu.com/. Accessed 14 September 2021. Proeva, N. (1997). Studii za antichkite Makedonci. Macedonia Prima. Proeva, N. (2010). Modern Macedonian myth as a response to the national myths of the neighbours (Albanian panillyrism, Greek panhellenism and Bulgarian panthracism). Zgodovinski cˇasopis (Historical Review), 64(141, 1–2), 176–219. Pulevski, Gj. (2003). Slavjansko-makedonska opshta istorija. MANU. Radi´c, R. (2005). Srbi pre Adama i posle njega (2nd ed.). Stubovi kulture. Rotkovi´c, R. (1992). Odakle su došli preci Crnogoraca. Matica Crnogorska. Sarkanjac, B. (2006, July 20). Chij e Aleksandar? Dnevnik. Šavli, J., Bor, M., & Tomaži´c, I. (1996). Veneti: First builders of European community: Tracing the history and language of early ancestors of Slovenes. Editiones Veneti. Sheleva, E. (1994). Elementi na post-modernata vo makedonskiot roman. Razgledi, 37 (7–10), 480–492. Skrbiš, Z. (2002). The emotional historiography of Venetologists: Slovene diaspora, memory and nationalism. Focaal: European Journal of Anthropology, 39, 41–55. Slaveska, L. (1992). Etnogenezata na makedonskiot narod - kontinuitet i tradicija: nekoi aspekti. Matica makedonska. Smith, H. (2011, August 14). Macedonia statue: Alexander the Great or a warrior on a horse. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/ world/2011/aug/14/alexander-great-macedonia-warrior-horse. Accessed 14 September 2021. Stefanoski, B. (2005). Short descriptive history about the origin of the Arm’nMacedonians: From pre-history to the Colonisation of Dacia. Casa Gramosta. Tomˇci´c, Z., & Lovri´c, A. (Eds.). (1999). Staroiransko podrijetlo Hrvata: zbornik simpozija, Zagreb 24 lipnja 1998. Kulturni centar pri Veleposlanstvo I. R. Iran. Tupurkovski, V. (1993). Istorija na Makedonija: od drevnina do smrtta na Aleksandar Makedonski. Titan. Tupurkovski, V. (1994). Istorija na Makedonija: od smrtta na Aleksandar Makedonski do makedonsko-rimskite vojni. Titan. Tupurkovski, V. (1995a). Imperijata vo plamen. Titan.

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CHAPTER 11

The Dissonant Narratives of the Skopje 2014 Project Loreta Georgievska-Jakovleva

...[the] state is invisible; it must be personified before it can be seen, symbolized before it can be loved, imagined before it can be conceived. (Walzer 1967 in Zelinsky, 1988)

In 2010, the Macedonian Government announced its decision to realise the Skopje 2014 Project. Its justification was explained in a speech delivered by the then Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski, in 2015. He stated that: ‘Skopje 2014 is an excellent project, with a meaningful essence, connected to our negated identity and history, a project which will beautify the capital city, making it more attractive for tourists whilst engaging the civil engineering and construction sectors at a time of great world economic crisis to create premises for our state institutions instead of paying rent, but maybe it has been our mistake that we wanted to make up for everything that had been missing over the past 50 years’ (Gruevski, 2015).

L. Georgievska-Jakovleva (B) Sts. Cyril and Methodius University, Skopje, North Macedonia

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 R. Hudson and I. Dodovski (eds.), Macedonia’s Long Transition, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-20773-0_10

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The Project is composed of a large number of sculptures; monuments of famous figures of Macedonian history and culture, and buildings— some of which host museums, whilst others are the offices of government ministries. The old National Theatre was rebuilt on the same spot where it had stood before the catastrophic earthquake of 1963 and a triumphal arch was built, named ‘The Macedonia Gate’. Under the auspices of the Project, old facades have been reconstructed, including the seat of the government; and other activities had been implemented that have changed the very face of Skopje.

The Skopje 2014 Project---The Visualisation of a Re-created Macedonian Identity Through the Skopje 2014 Project, the Government of the Republic of Macedonia retold a story about the continuity of the Macedonians from the Ancient period until the present day; a story by which in a simple ‘3 in 1’ way, a quick and easy solution to the three most complicated questions confronting the status of Macedonia could be found, so that: (1) through a visualised history, facts would be revealed and all identity negation issues would be overcome, (2) by choosing the preferred style (neoclassicism and baroque), so that Macedonia’s being part of Europe would be shown to all, and (3) by engaging all available resources, the economy would be improved and the negative impact of the world economic crisis would be reduced. All doors would be opened to a country which should fashion itself as being economically strong and dignified, especially those doors which lead into NATO and the EU. The story contained an image component in that it created an image of the Government itself, first of its prime minister and the future creator of the Project—Nikola Gruevski, as an intelligent and inventive individual, who was full of knowledge, dedicated and modest. Such qualities were seen to be a guarantee of the success of the Project, which aimed at boosting national feeling, by changing the image of Macedonia and improving its poor economy. As such the story was well-defined and spread among the people, based on the popular feeling that they had been a people who were seen as having been defeated throughout history, as a people who had never managed to prove their special identity. So with the Project a new image was created, that of a people with a heroic past, prosperity and a bright future, everything that the Macedonian people felt was actually lacking.

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Telling stories is an ancient skill which always provokes. This is clear to all those who either write or tell stories in that a well-told and wellaccepted story not only has aesthetic or entertaining effects, but it also has a strong motivating force that can mobilise people, because it ‘operates’ on their emotions. A story can move the borders between the public and the private, activate subconscious emotional states and become an efficient tool in the mobilisation of various energies, and different resources in all areas of human activities and existence. It would seem that the implementation of the Skopje 2014 Project was motivated by the realisation that ‘if we are not telling ourselves the right narratives, then we cannot imagine ourselves acting together to resolve our problems’ (Francis, 1998, p. 475). The logical question to ask would be: What are the ‘right narratives’ that need to be told in the context of Macedonia, in view of the problems arising as a result of the disintegration of the Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia and the period of transition that followed? Is the story about Skopje 2014 the true one? The understanding that the insight into truth, history and memory is not direct presents difficulties in achieving any consensus on the issue of choosing the ‘right narratives’ for a community. For the Government of Prime Minister Gruevski, the true story the Skopje 2014 Project was meant to visualise goes something like this: the Macedonian nation is based on its struggle for independence, while the period of antiquity represents the ‘glorious past’ to which many generations of patriots have aspired. This story creates a ‘victorious’ self-image that should act as a convincing retort to the country’s ‘identity crisis’. The persuasiveness of this narrative should be achieved through a strategy of the invention of place (Halbwachs, 1992; Martin, 1997; Nora, 1996; Osborne, 2001; Rose, 1995) by embedding it within an identity that would be brought about by the monuments of famous figures from the past as an insight into the ‘true’ history and memory, disputed by both internal and external agents. At massive construction venues, a monument has the same function that details play in realistic prose. The details construct the illusion of reality. They are used to ‘prove’ the veracity of what is shown, that is, it stands in place of the absent reality and testifies to the veracity of the story. The monuments are ‘iconic narratives’ that stand in the place of absent figures of historical reality. Thus, the visualisation of the ‘true’ story about Macedonia through the Skopje 2014 Project aimed at demonstrating the legitimacy of the country and its right to become a member of the EU and NATO under its own constitutional name.

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The Skopje 2014 Project dealt with the complex interplay between past and present, global and national, memory and oblivion. What seemed obvious is the emphasis on the excessive, which could be interpreted as an intentional strategy to oppose the real and present threat of the negation of Macedonian identity, arising from the idea that Macedonia is an artificial communist creation, without any historical legitimacy and, as such, lacking in the necessary attributes to constitute a state in its own right. The realisation of the Skopje 2014 Project was to establish a quick and ‘visible’ link to dismiss such opinions. As a result, we have the numerous statues of historical figures considered as being important in the history of Macedonia. The quantity could be interpreted as a testimony to the rich history and continuity, from antiquity (the ‘Warrior on a Horse’, and the monuments in front of the Assembly of the Republic of Macedonia), through the Middle Ages (the monuments to Sts. Cyril and Methodius and Tsar Samoil) to the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (the monumental sculptures of revolutionary heroes such as Goce Delchev, Jane Sandanski, and Pitu Guli), through to recent history (such as Chento and the Bridge of Arts). Viewed like that, the absurdity does not lie in the quantity of ‘exhibits’, but rather in the attempt to deny the existence of a country (through the negation of its constituent elements: its name, language and territory) on the basis of essentialist concepts with real consequences for the present. The absurdity is rather visible in the so-called name dispute, that is, in the possibility to dispute the right to the self-identification of a whole nation in spite of the fact that no other contemporary nation has any pretentions to the name Macedonia as a name for its own country. Initially, the Project was well received by the public. We can explain this reaction through the words of Milan Prodanovi´c (2010): ‘The negation of the need for the continuity of a radicalized, modern movement and the attempts to exclude, eliminate or minimize the limiting boundaries of tradition were proven ineffective…. Therefore, the shaping of the place with monuments as recognizable visual supports, megaliths of the collective memory, support the collection of memories of the past, while there is a clear implicit aim to preserve the memories of the people and events which are seen as important’. Hence, we cannot really condemn the declared aims of the Skopje 2014 Project to bring to the fore those parts of history and memory that nurture that image of cultural uniqueness. Starting from the realisation that there is no such thing as an inherent identity of a location and that material objects built on a given location

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construe certain memories that then serve as spatial coordinates of identity, that is, in Lynch’s words: ‘the people are constructed by the space’ (1960, p. 73) in the processes of interaction between place and experience, the Skopje 2014 Project should create a picture of the past that Macedonia would want to identify with. In other words, a picture that would be desirable to consumption and would ensure social cohesion, a unified collective memory and, therefore, a stable identity. A fine illustration of the fact that those efforts are not far off that target is the reception of the national basketball team in 2011, after it was placed fourth in the European Basketball Championship. They did not win the tournament or take a medal for that matter, but almost all the Macedonian media called on the public to greet the ‘victors’. The most common examples were reports that: ‘the basketball players will pass in triumph through the Macedonia Gate’ (MRT, 2011), which was met with a mass response and will likely enter the memory of the Macedonian state. Osborne (2001) says that this happens because ‘[h]umans create “place images” that become central to daily life and social practice. The material spaces and their representations are always ideological statements and constitute what Schein (1997, p. 28) calls a “materialized discourse”’. In other words, every change (in our case, the period of transition) causes a recomposition of the past which can be materialised in monuments and architecture that due to their emotional engagement (as in the case of reception of the basketball players) perform the fastest transfer of a given narrative about the past to the needs of the present day. What is chosen from the past and what shapes the story depends on the aims of the given ideology, and it is the political elite that has the power to materialise that story. The Skopje 2014 Project encouraged identification with the state through an emphasis on historical continuity. It was done through calling on the members of the community to: ‘recognize one another as being members of a larger group sharing a common historical metanarrative’ (Osborne, 2001, p. 9). So, a common memory and identity should be created for future generations, based on the victorious dynasty of Alexander of Macedon. One must bear in mind that the favoured memory is not an ‘objectively recorded past, but a reconstruction in a present day context and is never independent of the government’s ideas and contemplations’ (Halbwachs, 1992, p. 40). The goal of such public spectacles referring to the past, on the one hand, and tying that past to the present through a current sports event, on the other hand, serves to motivate the members

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of the community to see themselves as ‘winners’ in continuity. This begins with the military victories of Alexander of Macedon in the ancient past and continues to contemporary sports victories, and by that it results in a reconstruction of new collective memory which will be dominantly marked by victory, not by defeat. The mass turnout clearly demonstrates the success of the strategy. That establishes, in Gillis’ words (1994, pp. 3– 6), the recognition of ‘one another as being members of a larger group sharing a common historical meta-narrative’ staged by the ‘bureaucracy of memory’ which ‘determines what shall be remembered and what shall be forgotten and advocates the elite over popular memory’. Furthermore, in view of the insistence on the national identity of ‘great’ and stable nations, we could not really say that now, in the twenty-first century, national identities are an outdated and insignificant category. Quite the contrary, it is through the processes of globalisation and unification that European states insist on the specifics of a national culture which seems to be decisive in the building of a state’s dignity. Having in mind past experiences in the Republic of Macedonia—the fact that socialist ideology as internationalist by nature and approaches construed the public place as an open space without national symbols and national memory—the task of the persons who want to ‘fill up’ the ‘open/empty’ space with meanings that reflect both a civic and a national/ethnic concept is exceedingly difficult. The question arises: If the building of a national identity is an anachronous phenomenon in the twenty-first century because it refers to processes that belong primarily to the nineteenth century, what options are left for those nations that had no chance to ‘do it on time’, knowing that the issue has great currency now, in the twenty-first century? Is it possible to condemn the desire for a selfidentification that would improve the self-confidence of the members of a given nation and strengthen the sense of belonging, thereby constructing a memory that, one way or another, invokes a ‘glorious past’? In view of well-known and prescribed nineteenth-century matrixes, still valid today and brought to the fore by debates about European identity, the answer to that question can be nothing other than negative. To put it simply, if the discourse on the uniqueness of national characteristics and the uniqueness of cultural identities—based in part on essentialist narratives that constitute an unavoidable bone of contention—is so important to relations between states, then the creation of a narrative about the special nature of Macedonian cultural identity on similar essentialist stories is not an anachronistic one.

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Dissonant Voices On the other hand, bearing in mind the ongoing process of globalisation and European integration, the very idea of constructing a national identity through monuments and monumental architecture would seem to be anachronistic. Observed from this perspective, Skopje 2014 caused numerous discussions: local and foreign urban planners, architects, philosophers, political scientists, cultural workers and artists have all commented on the Project. They have all given their own interpretations, views and opinions, and more often than not these have been negative. Researchers, even those for whom the topic is not part of their own narrow scientific interest, make serious efforts to provide arguments for their positions, and institutions invest their resources into opinion polls and surveys. As a result, we could conclude that the reception of the Project by the public has moved from an initially enthusiastic support to a summary dismissal. Foreign visitors, on various occasions, as well as tourists reacting in similar ways are either amazed by the grand nature of the Project or are at least bewildered by it. Furthermore, as Harvey (1990) points out, so do many Macedonians believe, namely that the conceptualisation of place which is tied to identity politics is a ‘reactionary place-bound politics’, that does not secure unity; quite the opposite, Macedonian identity is being constituted through non-existent, fabricated and therefore dangerous elements, which do not attest to the grandeur of the nation, but rather serve to construct and demonstrate the grandeur of the cult of personality, in this case that of the former Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski. The latter reactions to the Project raise the question as to whether or not the engaged memory contributes to the sustainable development of a community. Despite the voices of the political elite and media, supported by some of the citizens, at the very start of the Skopje 2014 Project some silent voices appeared, but as the Project progressed, some opponents, intellectuals supported by a certain number of citizens, grew even louder. Those voices shaped a story which proved the opposite: the Skopje 2014 Project did not contribute to national unity but to the division of the nation. It recreated Macedonian national identity from a Slavonic to an ancient one, with which it contributed to the division of the ethnic Macedonians. It initiated interethnic problems due to the feelings of the Albanians in the Republic that they were being unequally represented, leading to the conclusion that the Project did not reflect the spirit of

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multi-ethnic reality in Macedonia. The Project has provoked negative reactions from neighbouring countries, especially Greece and Bulgaria, which believe that the monuments mean the usurpation of their own respective national histories. By doing this the Project did not improve Macedonia’s relations with its neighbouring countries; instead, it has complicated the EU and NATO accession process by pushing the country into further isolation. The Project did not seem to improve the economy of the country by a better touristic offer, but provided ugly aesthetics similar to Disneyland, which would cause foreign visitors to ridicule the country. The so-called beautifying of the city was incomplete and should not be a priority compared to other important problems, such as a poor infrastructure, poor healthcare and poor educational conditions. It was also too expensive, including the costs incurred from a high level of corruption. By covering the old look of the city with new buildings, the Government of the Republic of Macedonia behaved rather like a foreign conquerer, an action which has already been seen in this region (Chausidis, 2013). Along those lines, the Skopje 2014 Project is deemed to be inappropriate for a civil and liberal democratic state, whence a plural and liberal nationalism is examined through the relations of inclusivity. Instead, the Skopje 2014 Project enforces an ethnic nationalism that privileges the emotional and exclusivist celebration of national identity (Osborne, 2001). Hence, the iconic landscapes and mythic tales become a place of disunity rather than a site of cohesive collective memory, based on an applied style and aesthetics, and based on ethnic belonging and economic reasoning. It seemed as if the Skopje 2014 Project had the support of the majority of the Macedonian public up until the emergence of the socalled Colourful Revolution, a wide-net civic activist platform led by the ‘I Protest!’ movement, and identified by the slogan ‘No Justice, No Peace!’ (Nema pravda! Nema mir!). The Colourful Revolution was a public act demonstratively recognised by the public throwing of paint at the monuments from the Skopje 2014 Project in protest at the thencurrent political events (the wiretapping scandal, governmental cover-ups and the appropriation of public funds for private gain). The members of the ‘I Protest!’ movement gave out the following statement: ‘Why do we throw paint and colour? We colour as a sign of revolt, and protest, to point out the corruption and the public waste of funds embodied by the Skopje 2014 Project. Our anger and our paint-filled balloons are

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aimed exclusively at the symbols and the people responsible for the decisions these ungodly sums of money have produced, as they have been stripped from our very pockets’ (Protestiram, 2015). A series of activities that the media reported on followed: paint on the Macedonia Gate, the Ministry of Culture, the Fountain of the Warrior on a Horse, the municipal barracks of the City of Skopje; the Government of the Republic of Macedonia was not spared at the hands of the Colourful Revolution; faces painted with all sorts of colours, young and old, calls for even greater numbers, not backing down from the demands about political responsibility; hundreds of palms coloured yellow, green and red… As one of the protesters, Nikola Pisarev (2016), said: The Colourful Revolution is the best thing that has ever happened to Macedonia. It unites people and stands in opposition to the grayness of the regime and the deathly paleness of Skopje 2014. The Colourful Revolution is all VMRO is not; it stands for multi-ethnicity and multi-confessionality, different ideologies united in a common goal. (...) The Colourful Revolution is cool; it is love and a warning sign, desire and dissent. The Colourful Revolution is salvation and the basis for a new, healthy, colourful, prosperous Macedonia. Its colourfulness celebrates diversity. I love being colourful! I am sick and tired of the authorities’ grayness!

The aforementioned quotation best summarises the differences between the two concepts battling it out.

Conclusion The concept Gruevski’ Government had been following was based on the logic of processes characteristic for all states at the onset of their respective journey, and which re-emerge today as the result of migrations and globalisation. The Skopje 2014 Project that addressed the shared public space as a site for ritualistic remembering and performance was Gruevski’s government’s way of addressing its two most pressing issues: the unfavourable (auto)imagology about Macedonia as the reason behind the unfavourable international affirmation, and the country’s poor economic state. For the opponents and the subsequent Government’s cultural politics, the Project was a reflection of an authoritarian, dictatorial rule, which manipulated national sentiments for personal criminal financial gain, which in

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turn cancelled democracy and freedom in Macedonia, and with that, prolonged the country’s desired EU and NATO membership. The main reason for the people to reject the Skopje 2014 Project was not ideological or aesthetic, but economic. This is proven by the fact that the new Government has removed only one monument from the Project (Slobodna Evropa, 2018)—that of Andon Lazov Janev alias Kjoseto, an IMRO revolutionary known for his ruthless terrorist acts, while the decision to nominate Skopje as the European capital of culture for 2028 is based partially on the monuments from the Project. Regardless of people’s dissatisfaction with this decision, it points to the fact that this Project was the result of corruption. The financial scandals related to it and its low-quality construction are the most frequent remarks after the change in government. These facts have helped Macedonian citizens to realise that the Project fails to help build emotions and national sentiment, but rather manipulates them. So, public art in Macedonia (public sculpting of the national heroes, and the political iconography) has become a contested site, rather than the symbol of public identification and unity that had been the Government’s publically declared goal.

References Chausidis, N. (2013). Proekot Skopje 2014 – skica za edno naredno istrazhuvanje. Skopje. https://okno.mk/sites/default/files/082-Nikos-Chausidis-Sko pje-2014.pdf. Accessed 12 March 2017. Francis, D. (1998). Myth and history. Queen’s Quarterly, 105, 473–475. Gillis, J. (Ed.). (1994). Commemorations: The politics of national identity. Princeton University Press. Gruevski, N. (2015). Gruevski: Skopje 2014 odlichen proekt so znachajna sushtina povrzana so nashiot identitet i istorija. Kanal 5. https://kanal5.com.mk/art icles/233329/gruevski-skopje-2014-odlichen-proekt-so-znachajna-sushtinapovrzana-so-nashiot-identitet-i-istorija. Accessed 12 March 2017. Halbwachs, M. (1992). On collective memory. University of Chicago Press. Harvey, D. (1990). Between space and time: Reflections on the geographical imagination. Annals Association American Geographers, 80(3), 418–434. Lynch, K. (1960). The image of the city. Press. Martin, A. (1997). The practice of identity and an Irish sense of place. Gender, Place and Culture, 4(1), 89–114. MRT. (2011, September 18). Kosharkarite utre triumfalno kje pominat niz Porta Makedonija.

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Nora, P. (1996) Realms of memory: The construction of the French past (Vol. I). Conflicts and Divisions. New York: Columbia University Press. Osborne, B. S. (1992). From space to place: Images of nationhood. In: H. J. Selwood & J. H. Lehr (Eds.), Reflections from the prairies: Geographical essays (pp. 1–13). University of Winnipeg, Department of Geography. Osborne, B. S. (2001). Landscapes, memory, monuments, and commemoration: Putting identity in its place. Canadian Ethinc Studies, 33(3), 39–77. Pisarev, N. (2016, April 22). Zoshto ja sakam Sharenata revolucija? Okno. https://okno.mk/node/55265. Accessed 12 March 2017. Prodanovi´c, M. (2010). Spomenici kulture u eri savremene kreacije (pp. 470– 471). Republika. http://www.republika.co.rs/470-471/21.html. Accessed 12 March 2017. Protestiram. (2015). Facebook page @protestiramezaedno. https://www.facebook. com/protestiramezaedno/. Accessed 12 March 2017. Rose, G. (1995). Places and identity: A sense of place. In D. Massey & P. Jess (Eds.), A place in the world: Places, cultures and globalisation (pp. 87–118). The Open University. Schein, E. H. (1997). Organisational culture and leadership. Jossey-Bass. Slobodna Evropa. (2018, February 22). Spomenikot na Kjoseto otstranet od pred Vrhoven sud. https://www.slobodnaevropa.mk/a/29056082.html Zelinsky, W. (1988). Nation into state: The shifting symbolic foundations of American nationalism. University of North Carolina Press.

CHAPTER 12

An Analysis of Bulgaria’s Rejection of the Macedonian Ethno-Linguistic Identity and Its Implications Ognen Vangelov

Introduction The conflict over the ethno-linguistic identity of the Macedonian people living in the wider Macedonia region of today’s North Macedonia and parts of Bulgaria and Greece has been brought to the fore both in the EU and more generally in international affairs by Bulgaria’s double veto in December 2020 and June 2021 on opening North Macedonia’s accession talks with the EU (Gotev & Trkanjec, 2021). Although this episode appears to have come out of the blue, in reality, the conflict over the origin

This is an edited and amended version of an earlier article entitled ‘Bulgaria’s Claims of the Macedonian Ethno-Linguistic Identity’ which was published in Foreign Policy Review by the Hungarian Institute for Foreign Affairs and Trade in January 2022 O. Vangelov (B) University American College Skopje, Skopje, North Macedonia

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 R. Hudson and I. Dodovski (eds.), Macedonia’s Long Transition, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-20773-0_11

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of the Macedonian people and their language has been a protracted one, tainting relations among the states and peoples of the southern Balkans for the better part of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first century. Also, many international observers have connected the current Bulgarian policy towards North Macedonia with the Bulgarian domestic political crisis and the turn towards increasing nationalism in domestic electoral rivalries, where the ‘Macedonian question’ can serve as a useful tool for winning votes. While domestic politics is important in setting an agenda for hot topics in foreign policy, such as the ‘Macedonian question’ in Bulgaria, the current Bulgarian attitude towards North Macedonia’s EU membership was first announced ten years ago, when the political situation was quite different, and when Bulgaria was itself but a recent EU member. North Macedonia had been a candidate for EU accession since 2005, and discussions on the opening of talks began in 2010– 2011. At the time, the Bulgarian members of the European Parliament (MEPs) announced that the then Republic of Macedonia must agree to a Bulgarian reading of their ‘shared history’; that Macedonia ‘should not manipulate history in its history textbooks’; as Macedonia’s reading of history had been ‘provocative’ towards Bulgaria regarding its medieval and modern history (Glamchevski, 2011). Indeed, although Bulgaria’s 2020 veto seemed to have surprised many in the EU, this was not, in fact, Bulgaria’s first veto. It was in 2011 when Bulgaria had lodged its first veto on opening the accession talks for the Republic of Macedonia. Bulgaria had then supported Greece on vetoing North Macedonia’s launch of the accession talks (despite a positive recommendation by the European Commission), and Bulgarian President Rossen Plevneliev had justified the veto by stating that: ‘Bulgaria cannot grant an EU certificate to the actions of the government in Skopje which is systematically employing an ideology of hate towards Bulgaria’, and that: ‘…the government in Skopje be done with its anti-Bulgarian campaign, and the manipulation of historical facts’ (Gotev, 2012, para. 11). Nevertheless, as Greece had been the main obstacle to Macedonia’s NATO and EU accession, having vetoed Macedonia’s NATO membership since 2008, the Bulgarian stance did not receive much attention at the time.

How a Bilateral Issue Was Internationalized The issue of Macedonian ethno-linguistic identity rose to prominence outside Macedonia and Bulgaria when it became evident that the EU

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would recommend opening the accession talks for North Macedonia’s EU membership in 2019–2020. The two countries had previously signed a bilateral Friendship Treaty in August 2017, according to which both countries were to set up an interdisciplinary committee on historical and educational issues ‘to contribute to the objective, based on authentic and evidence-based historical sources, scientific interpretation of the historical events’ (United Nations, 2017, p. 16). A committee consisting of seven experts from each side was set up thereafter, and it has since been meeting four to six times a year. However, in three years, it has been unable to find common ground on the historical interpretations of events and personalities in the history of the two nations. Bulgaria has used the stalemate on the Committee as grounds for its subsequent veto in the European Council on North Macedonia’s opening of EU accession negotiations. In other words, Bulgaria has justified its veto by claiming that North Macedonia has not been complying with the Friendship Treaty due to the lack of results reached by the interdisciplinary committee (Radio Free Europe, 2020). However, it appears that Bulgaria’s official stance towards North Macedonia has radicalized since 2018, after North Macedonia and Greece had signed the Prespa Agreement under the auspices of the United Nations, which resolved the three decade-long dispute instigated by Greece in 1991. Greece had objected to the use of the constitutional name the Republic of Macedonia, claiming that it allegedly implied territorial ambitions regarding the northern Greek province of Macedonia. The Prespa Agreement resolved the issue by adding the qualifier ‘North’ in front of ‘Macedonia’. The Republic of North Macedonia was thus able to join NATO, becoming its 30th member in March 2020. At the same time, the Agreement acknowledged the existence of the Macedonian language and the right of North Macedonia’s people to call themselves Macedonians, including their cultural, historical and linguistic distinctiveness. This development seems to have irritated Sofia, as it did not fit its own claims that the Macedonian people and language were in fact a derivative of the Bulgarian people and language. As it became evident that the European Commission would likely recommend the opening of accession talks for North Macedonia (and Albania) at its December summit in 2019, Bulgaria passed a parliamentary declaration about its stance on the issue of EU enlargement and Macedonian identity in October 2019. This declaration would only allow North Macedonia’s membership in the EU if Bulgaria’s conditions were met. Among other things in the

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declaration, Bulgaria asserted that it categorically opposes the ‘eventual European legitimation of a past ideology with an anti-Bulgarian character’ and the ‘rewriting and appropriation of the history of the part of the Bulgarian people after 1944, which is the pillar of the anti-Bulgarian ideological construction of Yugoslav totalitarianism’ (National Assembly of the Republic of Bulgaria, 2019). The declaration also demanded that North Macedonia renounce any idea of a Macedonian ethnic minority on the territory of Bulgaria (National Assembly of the Republic of Bulgaria, 2019). Although the declaration does not explain what it means by ‘antiBulgarian ideological construction’, an explanation was included in the Framework Position for EU Enlargement and the Process of Association and Stabilization: Republic of North Macedonia and Albania, issued by the Bulgarian government the day before the adoption of the parliamentary declaration. This Framework Position contains a long list of demands for North Macedonia to fulfil if it wants to win Bulgaria’s approval for EU negotiations. Among the many stipulations, it demands that North Macedonia remove any plaque commemorating events from the Second World War that contain the phrase ‘Bulgarian fascist occupier’; that EU documents use the phrase ‘official language of the Republic of North Macedonia’ instead of ‘Macedonian language’, and if the term ‘Macedonian language’ is used, it should be clarified that ‘the linguistic norm in the Republic of North Macedonia is tied to the evolution of the Bulgarian language and its dialects in the former Yugoslav republic after their codification in 1944’. Furthermore, ‘no document during the accession process shall be understood as Bulgaria’s recognition of the existence of a so-called “Macedonian language”, different from Bulgarian’ (Council of Ministers of the Republic of Bulgaria, 2019). Curiously, the Framework Position also demanded that before the second intergovernmental conference between North Macedonia and the EU is held, ‘all historical and literary sources from the nineteenth and twentieth century [before the codification of the Macedonian language in 1944], should be presented in Macedonian school textbooks in their original norm’. This means that Macedonian textbooks must contain texts in the Bulgarian language that had been used prior to the standardization of Macedonian in 1944. In short, based on this document, an ‘anti-Bulgarian ideological construction’ means virtually anything related to the expression of a distinct Macedonian ethnic, cultural or linguistic identity prior to 1944, that is,

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prior to the establishment of Macedonia as a state within the framework of Socialist Yugoslavia. In March 2020, the EU announced that it would start accession talks with North Macedonia by the end of the year. At the same time, the Bulgarian government issued an explanatory memorandum, a document that it sent out to all other member states. This memorandum was then attached as an annex to the European Council Conclusions issued in March 2020, but as a unilateral statement of a member state, not as the Council’s position (European Policy Institute—Skopje, 2020, p. 6). The memorandum reflects much of what had been stipulated in the Framework Position of Bulgaria’s government the previous year, for example, the statement that: ‘The accession path of the Republic of North Macedonia provides a valuable opportunity for its leadership to break with the ideological legacy and practices of communist Yugoslavia. The enlargement process must not legitimize the ethnic and linguistic engineering that has taken place under former authoritarian regimes’ (Kolekjevski, 2020). This statement further reinforces Bulgaria’s attempt to categorize the distinct Macedonian ethno-linguistic existence as a legacy of Yugoslav authoritarianism, which must be abandoned and remedied during North Macedonia’s accession process in the EU. The memorandum further attempts to offer a historical overview of the question of the Macedonian identity prior to the creation of the Macedonian republic within Yugoslavia, with dubious claims, for example that: ‘following the First World War the overwhelming majority of [today’s North Macedonia’s] Slavonic population used to clearly self-identify as Bulgarian’, and that: ‘Belgrade tried to eradicate the Bulgarian identity of this population’ (Kolekjevski, 2020). It then continues to assert that: ‘a Macedonian language or ethnicity did not exist until 2 August 1944’ (Kolekjevski, 2020). Although Sofia had the opportunity to lodge a veto on the European Commission decision to open accession talks for North Macedonia in March 2020, the veto came after the Commission revealed its negotiation framework in June the same year. The Framework did not consider Bulgaria’s demands from its explanatory memorandum and used the term ‘Macedonian language’ when stating that EU legislation should be translated into the candidate’s language (Telma, 2020). In summary, Bulgaria’s claims regarding the Macedonian ethnolinguistic identity became an EU (and thus international) matter once the opportunity arose for Bulgaria to assert its advantageous position as an EU member state. By threatening to continuously (ab)use its veto right in

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the EU, Bulgaria is attempting to impose its own interpretation of history. If this interpretation is not accepted as an indisputable fact during North Macedonia’s accession process in the EU, North Macedonia must not be allowed to join the bloc. According to Bulgaria’s interpretation, the population of North Macedonia and its language was Bulgarian prior to 1944, whereas anything that North Macedonia calls Macedonian people and language must be understood as a historical aberration, and a conspiracy by both Belgrade and the Former President of Yugoslavia, Josip Broz Tito to engineer a Macedonian identity so as to thwart the ‘legitimate’ Bulgarian claims regarding the Macedonian people and language. It logically follows that even today’s expression of a distinct Macedonian ethnic identity and language, with its own culture, history, and independent development, is considered by Bulgaria as being an ‘anti-Bulgarian ideological construction’ and propaganda, which must be remedied through the imposition of new educational plans for history and other subjects in Macedonian schools, which would reflect the ‘real identity’ of its population. The underlying objective, it appears, is to ‘re-engineer’ (to use the term in Bulgaria’s memorandum) North Macedonia’s population into its ‘true Bulgarian’ self. However, this objective, at least for the time being, appears to be highly unpopular in the EU. Most member states, though reluctant to openly condemn Bulgaria’s behaviour as a member state, have reiterated that bilateral issues related to historical disputes should not be a subject discussion in the EU. Some states have been more vocal by issuing statements in direct opposition to Bulgaria’s demands, for example, the Czech Republic and Slovakia (Marusic, 2020).

Why Does Bulgaria Reject the Macedonian Ethno-Linguistic Identity? As explained in the previous section, the issue of the Macedonian ethnolinguistic identity has become a subject of international discussion only recently, with Bulgaria’s veto on North Macedonia’s EU accession. However, the issue has long been a bone of contention between the two countries, as well as previously between Yugoslavia and Bulgaria, following the break between Tito and Stalin in 1948 (Banac, 2018, p. 192). The modern-day claims by Bulgaria are, therefore, at least seven decades old, and the roots of these claims go back to the very establishment of Bulgaria as a Principality under Ottoman control in 1878.

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After the Russo-Turkish war, and in accordance with the Treaty of San Stefano, signed in March 1878 and dictated by the Russians, an independent state of Bulgaria was to be created, incorporating most of today’s North Macedonia, as well as parts of today’s Serbia, Kosovo, Greece, Romania and Albania. However, this state entity never came into being, as a few months later the Treaty of San Stefano was replaced by the Treaty of Berlin. Signed in July 1878, this treaty allowed for the creation of a semi-independent Bulgaria under Ottoman control, with a much smaller territory, excluding the territories in the west (in other words, today’s North Macedonia, and the other parts initially envisaged by the San Stefano Treaty). Nonetheless, the initial San Stefano project, which did not result in any state-building, became engrained in Bulgaria’s historical narrative as a grave injustice to Bulgarians, leaving large parts of what it believes is its rightful property under the control of foreign entities. That this continues to be the case even today is attested to by Bulgaria’s most important holiday, the 3 March national holiday, the day of the signing of the San Stefano Treaty. Thus, Bulgaria has been celebrating a stateproject that never came into being and has never existed. However, the project has had powerful ramifications for Bulgaria’s historical narrative: the project was dictated in San Stefano by Russia, which has influenced Bulgaria’s internal and foreign politics in a profound way, as well as many of its decisions to enter the wars of the twentieth century. During the Balkan Wars of 1912–1913, Ottoman Macedonia was partitioned between Greece, Serbia and Bulgaria, with Greece acquiring around 50% of the whole territory. Serbia and Bulgaria received the remaining 49%, while a miniscule portion went to Albania (around 40% for Serbia, 9% for Bulgaria and 1% for Albania). As Bulgaria was dissatisfied with its gains from the Balkan Wars, it joined the Central Powers in the First World War to gain more Macedonian territory (which had been apportioned to Serbia and Greece), which it believed was its rightful property. Bulgaria was eventually defeated and was reduced to its nine per cent of territory acquired during the Balkan Wars. The same pattern was repeated in the Second World War, when Bulgaria joined Hitler’s coalition to acquire Macedonian and other territories from Serbia and Greece, but it eventually lost the war and only switched sides several months before the end of the war. Evidently, Bulgaria’s foreign policy in the first half of the twentieth century focused on how to correct the ‘historical mistake’ that had existed since the annulment of the San Stefano project for a greater Bulgaria,

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but any gains were only temporary, and the results were catastrophic for Bulgaria in all these wars, with vast casualties. During the First World War alone, Bulgaria lost 300,000 people, 100,000 of whom were soldiers, the highest number of soldiers lost per capita in any country involved in the war (Bell et al., 2021). Thus, Bulgaria’s emotive stakes in the ‘Macedonian question’ remained high throughout the twentieth century, where all of its losses in the previous century had been attributed to neighbouring states and wider conspiracies rather than to its own decisions to enter wars with an agenda of ‘uniting all Bulgarians in one state’. However, one major difference occurred during the Second World War. In all previous wars, the Macedonian population had been recruited to fight the wars of the states possessing the territory of Macedonia, whereas in the Second World War the local population formed a resistance to Bulgarian occupation, with the agenda of creating a Macedonian state. Towards the end of the war, the first and second Antifascist Assemblies of the National Liberation of Macedonia (ASNOM) were called into being, which resulted in Macedonia becoming one of the six republics that formed the new Yugoslav federation led by Josip Broz Tito, with Macedonian as the official language of the republic. Initially, Bulgaria’s leadership, especially the first post-Second World War Prime Minister of Bulgaria, Georgi Dimitrov, welcomed the constitution of the Macedonian republic within Yugoslavia, thereby recognizing its population and language as being distinct from Bulgarian. Under Dimitrov’s leadership, Bulgaria went as far as to establish an autonomous region in Pirin Macedonia (the Bulgarian part of Macedonia), recognizing and even promoting the Macedonian language in the schools of the region (Marinov, 2020, pp. 44–60). In the short period of good Yugoslav-Bulgarian neighbourly relations immediately after the Second World War, there was even talk of creating a larger Yugoslav federation, including Bulgaria (Marinov, 2020, p. 43). During this time a census was also carried out, according to which around 70% of the population in this region declared itself Macedonian. Very similar results appeared in the census ten years later, in 1956, in terms of the total number of ethnic Macedonians in Bulgaria, although the official stance in Bulgaria today is that the population was forcibly registered as Macedonian. In the later censuses nearly all of those who had claimed a Macedonian ethnicity disappeared, since the possibility to self-declare as Macedonian ceased to exist after 1956. Despite Bulgaria’s position on the non-existence of any Macedonians on its territory, following the collapse of the communist regime in

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Bulgaria in 1990, ethnic Macedonians attempted to form both cultural organizations and political parties. However, Bulgaria has consistently refused to officially register such organizations, considering them a threat to Bulgaria’s ethnic homogeneity, and thereby rendering them illegal. As several MEPs have noted, the Macedonian minority in Bulgaria was declared non-existent in 1963, and Bulgaria started a persecution campaign against those who continued to self-identify as such. Namely, MEPs have accused Bulgaria of not respecting the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities, and that: ‘no Macedonian NGO or political party can be registered or active, and citizens who consider themselves to be Macedonians cannot officially state as much’ (European Parliament, 2018). Moreover, they note that: ‘these policies have led to 11 European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) judgments against Bulgaria, and have been described in every major human rights report’ (European Parliament, 2018). Thus, Bulgaria’s policy of the recognition of the Macedonian ethnolinguistic identity was short-lived. This policy began to take shape as soon as Yugoslav President Tito broke from Stalin’s Soviet Union in 1948, when Bulgaria, as the Union’s closest ally, began to gradually reverse its policy of recognizing the Macedonian ethnic identity. In the immediate aftermath of the rift between Tito and Stalin, the paper of the Bulgarian Communist Party (BCP), Rabotnichesko delo, published an article by BCP Secretary Georgi Chankov challenging the authenticity of the Macedonian language and claiming that it was a concoction prepared by Belgrade and that the Macedonian people really spoke Bulgarian (Koneski, 1948). Curiously, the same Georgi Chankov had given entirely different statements the previous year, when Yugoslavia and Bulgaria were on good terms. He stated that: ‘the Macedonian people gave enormous sacrifice and won its right to be respected as a free and equal people’, adding that ‘the Macedonians in Pirin Macedonia should be educated as an integral part of the Macedonian people, which already has its own state; they should learn their own history as well as learn, write, and speak their own Macedonian language’ (Koneski, 1948). The positions expressed by Chankov and the BCP in 1948, after the rift between Tito and Stalin, only became more rigid in the following decades. Whereas Chankov initially only challenged the authenticity of the Macedonian language, still claiming that there was a Macedonian nation, which really spoke Bulgarian (Koneski, 1948), the following decades were

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marked by a complete denial of any expression of a distinct Macedonian identity, whether it was linguistic or ethnic in nature. The return towards a resolute denial of the Macedonian ethnic identity became an explicit policy when Todor Zhivkov became Chief of the Communist Party of Bulgaria and Bulgaria’s President in the 1960s. The position formulated in this period became the cornerstone of Bulgaria’s mainstream political and academic position up to the present day, as shown above in Bulgaria’s Framework Position and the ‘explanatory memorandum’ in 2019 and 2020. During the meeting between Yugoslav President Josip Broz Tito and Bulgarian President Todor Zhivkov in 1963, Zhivkov stated that: ‘the Bulgarian Communist Party recognizes the “creation” of a “Macedonian national consciousness” as an “objective reality”, but that it was only limited to Yugoslav Macedonia’ (Marinov, 2020, p. 73). This identity, according to Zhivkov, also had a starting date—after the Second World War, and it was built on ‘anti-Bulgarian’ foundations (Marinov, 2020, p. 73). Thus, the language used by Zhivkov in 1963 to explain the ‘history of the Macedonian identity’ is clearly the point of view that thereafter became the official political and academic position of Bulgaria’s elites and institutions, still used up to the present day, including the documents issued by Bulgaria’s government to its EU partners. The fact that the 2020 veto has become Bulgaria’s number one hot foreign policy topic has also consolidated the Bulgarian public opinion against North Macedonia’s EU membership. Based on a poll from 2020, more than 80% of Bulgarians refuse to support North Macedonia’s EU membership if the latter does not meet Sofia’s conditions, a massive 65% increase since 2019, when only 15% had a negative attitude towards North Macedonia (Buldioski & Tcherneva, 2020).

What Is the Rationale Behind Bulgaria’s Position? As discussed above, Bulgaria’s central claim is that the Macedonian ethnic and linguistic identity was engineered by the Yugoslav communist regime and its leader, Josip Broz Tito. This identity came into existence, so the narrative claims, on 2 August 1944, and it has no ‘authentic’ historical evolution. In fact, as the story goes, the Macedonian ethnic and linguistic identity had been created out of the Bulgarian people inhabiting the area of today’s North Macedonia for a millennium. Likewise, the standard Macedonian language is simply a regional norm of the ‘Bulgarian dialects’

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in Macedonia, and the norm itself was concocted by Belgrade to distance the language from its ‘authentic Bulgarian roots’. To support this narrative, Bulgaria’s mainstream political and academic elites often claim that the population in today’s North Macedonia selfidentified as Bulgarian in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, up to the Second World War, when the new identity took hold based on Communist repression and intimidation. Evidence that is frequently used for this narrative is the claim that ever since the ninth and eleventh centuries, from the time of Cyril and Methodius, and Tsars Samuel and Simeon the population in today’s Bulgaria and wider Macedonia has homogenized and consolidated itself into a single Bulgarian people and language. It follows that all the historical events and personalities from that period onward, up to the Second World War, were firmly tied to the history of the Bulgarian people and language in both today’s Bulgaria and North Macedonia (and parts of Greece, Serbia, Romania, Kosovo and Albania). There is indeed evidence that the term ‘Bulgarian’ has been used to describe the Slavonic-speaking population in the Ottoman Empire, often indiscriminately, covering populations that had developed separate national identities. For instance, the Ottoman explorer Evliya Çelebi wrote of ‘Bulgarians’ in Belgrade and Sarajevo in the seventeenth century (Friedman, 1975, p. 281). Thus, the use of this term to mean much more than what later became a Bulgarian ethno-nation has had a fundamental impact in shaping the Bulgarian narrative of a ‘millennium-long Bulgarian ethnic and linguistic continuity’. Moreover, some of the nineteenthcentury renaissance personalities in Macedonia have also described their vernacular language as Bulgarian, even if they wrote in their local Macedonian dialect; witness, for example, the work of Joakim Krchovski and Kiril Pejchinovikj in the first half of the nineteenth century (Friedman, 1975, p. 282). In this period the main task of these theological educators was to combat the dangers of the Hellenization of the Slavonic-speaking population, thus the distinction between what was Bulgarian and what was Macedonian was of little importance (Friedman, 1975, p. 281). Also, it is important to emphasize that a Bulgarian standard language did not exist at this time either, so most Slavonic-speaking educators used a mixture of their local dialects and the traditional Old Church-Slavonic language. In fact, it should be noted that all the south-Slav standard languages only began to take shape in the second half of the nineteenth century. Therefore, using the term ‘Bulgarian’ today at face value to describe this history

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as a history of the Bulgarian people in Bulgaria, North Macedonia and other neighbouring states, deprived of the complex context of the time, only serves the purpose of a complete politicization of the issue with the clear agenda of appropriating the history of the region as the history of a single Bulgarian people or ethno-nation. This appropriation, on the other hand, serves as a useful tool for the contemporary pretensions of the Bulgarian political and academic elites with regard to the Macedonian ethno-national history prior to 1944 and fits into the narrative of grievances that the Bulgarian nation had been suffering a grave injustice ever since the annulment of the San Stefano Treaty in 1878. In fact, it is really problematic, to say the least, to speak of a clear Bulgarian ethno-national identity and self-identification in the nineteenth century in either today’s Bulgaria or in wider Macedonia. As mentioned above, the term ‘Bulgarian’ was used historically (although this term was not used exclusively, only on occasion) to denote various Slavonicspeaking populations during the Ottoman period. However, when it comes to the self-identification of these populations, there is little, if any evidence to claim that these populations commonly expressed an ethnic Bulgarian identity. The process of nation-building in Bulgaria only really occurred after the creation of the Bulgarian Principality in 1878 and the creation of institutions, including universal education, military conscription and other state-building practices. Shortly before the creation of the Principality, the Bulgarian Exarchate was created, which also provided a means for creating a Bulgarian national consciousness. In reality, prior to the creation of Bulgarian religious and state institutions in the late nineteenth century, the Slavonic-speaking populations in the Ottoman regions that covered today’s Bulgaria and wider Macedonia mostly self-identified with religion rather than ethnicity. As the Belgian historian Raymond Detrez (2020) explains, the acquisition of national consciousness is not a mass phenomenon but an individual psychological development, resulting from a socialization, imposed by various educational, administrative and repressive means. Thus, he asserts that ‘in the nineteenth century Ottoman Empire… such nationalizing measures were… lacking; in addition, a multitude of national ideologies and various other (regional, vocational, social, and cultural) loyalties competed’ (Detrez, 2020). Contrary to the claims of the official Bulgarian narrative that a Macedonian identity only emerged after the Second World War, Detrez claims that the second half of the nineteenth century

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witnessed: ‘the first convincing indications of the emergence of a Macedonian national ideology, which Bulgarian historiography as a rule passes in silence’ (Detrez, 2020). Which asserts that in 1875, at the time of the creation of the Bulgarian Exarchate and three years before the Bulgarian Principality, and a half century before the decisions of Comintern, the nineteenth-century Georgi Pulevski the Macedonian ideologue wrote that: ‘“a people are individuals who are from the same origin and who speak a common language, and the place where they live is called a homeland”, concluding: “and so the Macedonians are a people and their homeland is Macedonia”’ (Detrez, 2021). This is echoed by other historians outside Bulgaria. For instance, Katrin Bozeva-Abazi writes that: ‘…one cannot speak of Bulgarians and Serbs as integrated national communities in the first half of the nineteenth century. Although historians refer to “Serb” and “Bulgarian” to denote ethnic origin, the notion of a modern nation was an intellectual invention of the late nineteenth century’ (Bozeva-Abazi, 2003, p. 48). She adds that people in Bulgaria came to identify with a Bulgarian nation, in a process stimulated and completed by the Bulgarian state. It was the state that ‘accelerated the emergence of common national identity, not vice versa’, and it was the ‘Bulgarian political elites of the late nineteenth century that “reconstructed” the period of national awakening’ (Bozeva-Abazi, 2003, p. 80). Moreover, even after the creation of the Bulgarian state in 1878, Abazi contends that: ‘national loyalty continued to be a vague, even a weird notion to the majority of… Bulgarian peasants’ (Bozeva-Abazi, 2003, p. 123). Even a few decades after the creation of Bulgarian state institutions, in 1900 72% of Bulgarians remained illiterate (Bozeva-Abazi, 2003, p. 266). Aside from the convincing indications of a Macedonian national ideology in the second half of the nineteenth century, as Detrez (2021) asserts, just four years after the codification of Bulgarian in 1899, the book On Macedonian Matters by Macedonian intellectual and linguist Krste Misirkov was published in 1903, in which he clearly proposes a Macedonian standard language based on the Macedonian central dialects (Misirkov, 2010, pp. 351–356). These same principles of standardization were applied in 1944, when Macedonia was constituted as a state in Federal Yugoslavia. Thus, the Bulgarian central claim that the populations of both Bulgaria and North Macedonia had a clear idea of being ethnically Bulgarian is implausible and unsustainable.

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Conclusion The recent internationalization of the Bulgarian claims regarding the Macedonian ethno-linguistic identity through the abuse of its right to veto the launch of North Macedonia’s EU accession talks is based on long-standing Bulgarian policies designed to deny the existence of a separate Macedonian ethnic identity and language. These policies have been consistent at least since the 1960s and have been embedded in Bulgaria’s position when dealing with the ‘Macedonian question’. The motives behind these policies are complex. On the one hand, they lie in the mythologized vision of a millennium-old Bulgarian ethnic identity that has been forcibly and violently separated through the intervention of communists, as well as personally by Yugoslav leader Josip Broz Tito. On the other hand, these claims have been a component of the Bulgarian nation-building processes since the late nineteenth century and have continued both through conscious efforts, historiographic legacies, as well as inertia. It would appear that the underlying objective of this denial today, is to ‘re-engineer’ the Macedonian ethnic identification into its ‘true Bulgarian self’ through the process of North Macedonia’s EU accession and by imposing educational curricula on North Macedonia based on this mythologized Bulgarian vision of the millennium-old Bulgarian ethnic history. As explained in this article, such a historical interpretation is not only implausible but also unsustainable both from a political and from a historical perspective.

References Banac, I. (2018). With Stalin against Tito: Cominformist splits in Yugoslav communism. Cornell University Press. Bell, J. D., Dimitrov, P., Danforth, L., & Carter, F. W. (2021). Bulgaria. Encyclopaedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/place/Bulgaria Bozeva-Abazi, K. (2003). The shaping of Bulgarian and Serbian national identities, 1800s–1900s (Doctoral dissertation), McGill University, Montreal, Canada. Buldioski, G., & Tcherneva, V. (2020, December 2). How to advance a European solution to Bulgaria’s and North-Macedonia’s dispute. European Council on Foreign Relations. https://ecfr.eu/article/how-to-advance-a-european-sol ution-to-bulgarias-and-north-macedonias-dispute/ Council of Ministers of the Republic of Bulgaria. (2019, October 9). Ramkova pozitsia otnosno razshiryavane na ES i procesa na stabilizirane i asocirane:

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Republika Severna Makedonia. https://www.gov.bg/bg/prestsentar/novini/ ramkova-pozitsia Detrez, R. (2020). About two scholarly investigations and a Bulgarian author. Dzialo, 8(16), http://www.abcdar.com/magazine/XVI/44_Raymond%20D etrez.pdf Detrez, R. (2021, January 19). Za Bugarite i Makedoncite: prof. Rajmond Detrez im odgovara na kriticharite. DW. https://p.dw.com/p/3o7J6 European Parliament. (2018, June 18). Parliamentary questions: Question for written answer E-003308-18 to the Commission rule 130. https://www.eur oparl.europa.eu/doceo/document/E-8-2018-003308_EN.html European Policy Institute—Skopje. (2020). EU-North-Macedonia accession negotiations: The implication of the Bulgarian conditions. https://epi.org. mk/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/EU_MK-accession-negotiations_implic ations-of-BG-conditions.pdf Friedman, V. (1975). Macedonian language and nationalism during the nineteenth and early twentieth century. In K. E. Naylor (Ed.), Balcanistica, occasional papers in Southeast European studies (pp. 280–292). Slavica Publishers. Glamchevski, T. (2011, November 24). Dali bugarskite evropratenici navistina ja oddrzhuvaat Makedonija vo evrointegraciite? DW. https://p.dw.com/p/ 13GHU Gotev, G. (2012, November 5). Bulgaria veto’s Macedonia’s EU accession talks. Euractiv. https://www.euractiv.com/section/enlargement/news/bulgaria-vet oes-macedonia-s-eu-accession-talks/ Gotev, G., & Trkanjec, Z. (2021, June 23). Bulgaria maintains its North Macedonia veto. Euractiv. https://www.euractiv.com/section/politics/short_ news/bulgaria-maintains-its-north-macedonia-veto/ Kolekjevski, I. (2020). Bulgaria objects to ‘state-sponsored anti-Bulgarian ideology’ in North Macedonia. MIA. Koneski, B. (1948). Po povod najnoviot napad na nashiot jazik. Zemski Odbor na NR Makedonija. Marinov, T. (2020). Makedonskoto prashanje od 1944 do denes: komunizmot i nacionalizmot na Balkanot. Foundation Open Society—Macedonia. Marusic, S. J. (2020, December 18). Czechs, Slovaks rejects Bulgaria’s ‘historical’ twist to enlargement criteria. Balkan Insight. https://balkaninsight.com/ 2020/12/18/czecks-slovaks-reject-bulgarias-historical-twist-to-enlargementcriteria/ Misirkov, K. P. (2010). On Macedonian matters. In A. Ersoy, M. Górny, & V. Kechriotis (Eds.), Modernism: Representations of national culture (pp. 351– 356). Central European University Press. https://books.openedition.org/ceu p/985

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National Assembly of the Republic of Bulgaria. (2019, October 10). Deklaratsia na Chetirideset i chetvrtoto Narodno s’branie na Republika Bulgaria v’v vrzska s razshiravaneto na Evropeyskia s’juz i Procesa na stabilizirane i asocirane na Republika Severna Makedonia i Republika Albania. https://parliament.bg/ en/declaration/ID/157188 Radio Free Europe. (2020, November 17). Bulgaria blocks start of North Macedonia’s EU accession talks. https://www.rferl.org/a/bulgaria-blocks-start-ofnorth-macedonia-s-eu-accession-talks/30955279.html Telma. (2020, July 2). Shto sodrzhi nacrt pregovarachkata ramka na EU so S. Makedonija?. https://bit.ly/3Fb799B Treaty of San Stefano. (2021). Encyclopaedia Britannica. https://www.britan nica.com/event/Treaty-of-San-Stefano United Nations. (2017, August 1). Treaty of friendship, good-neighbourliness and cooperation between the Republic of Bulgaria and the Republic of Macedonia, No. 55013. https://treaties.un.org/doc/Publication/UNTS/ No%20Volume/55013/Part/I-55013-08000002804f5d3c.pdf

CHAPTER 13

And Beyond: An Afterword Robert Hudson and Ivan Dodovski

When we started researching for the present volume Macedonia’s Long Transition, the country was beset by a number of serious problems, such as the wiretapping affair, the Colourful Revolution and the migration crisis along the Balkan Route. There were accusations of government corruption, backsliding and state-capture, and the continued blocking of the Euro-Atlantic project due to the name dispute between Macedonia and Greece. Since that time, there was a change of government and one of our fellow authors, Stevo Pendarovski, became president of the country, whilst another, Blerim Reka, ran as a presidential candidate in the 2019 elections. The Prespa Agreement was signed between the then Foreign Minister Nikola Dimitrov and his Greek counterpart Nikos Kotzias on 17 June 2018, which ended the long-lasting name dispute as the country changed its name to North Macedonia. On 27 March

R. Hudson (B) University of Derby, Derby, UK e-mail: [email protected] R. Hudson · I. Dodovski University American College Skopje, Skopje, North Macedonia e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 R. Hudson and I. Dodovski (eds.), Macedonia’s Long Transition, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-20773-0_13

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2020, the Republic of North Macedonia became the thirtieth member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, thereby fulfilling part of its long-awaited Euro-Atlantic ambitions. At long last, it looked as though Macedonia would be able to start the entry process for European Union integration, which had been vetoed by Greece for years. Throughout its existence as an independent state, Macedonia has been dependent on the influences, interferences and in some cases, support presented by external players. As emphasised in Chapter 2, the country can almost be defined by its relations with both its immediate neighbours, and the influence of those more distant states, such as the United States and Russia. For example, in the early years of Macedonia’s long transition, the country was very much dependent upon foreign powers and international organisations such as the UN, the EU and NATO for its very survival; consider, for instance, the role played by UNPROFOR (later rebranded as UNPREDEP) during the first half of the 1990s at the time of the Wars of Yugoslav Secession, when Macedonia was seen as being an ‘oasis of peace’. Indeed, after the declaration of independence in September 1991, the United States had been robustly involved in supporting Macedonia in its state-building efforts and its drive towards EU and NATO membership. By contrast, confronted with its own problems since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Russian Federation lessened in its influence over the country; that is, until Putin’s third term of office as President, when Russia began to openly express its interest in opposing Macedonia’s NATO aspirations, whilst promoting stronger economic ties and exerting an ever-growing soft power on the country (Bakrevska Dodovska, 2017). With regard to the European Union, the country had signed the Stabilisation and Association Agreement with the EU, in 2001 and it became a candidate country in 2005, a status it has held ever since, but years were lost over the name dispute with its neighbour Greece, an EU member state that vetoed progress towards the EU and NATO membership during a period of democratic backsliding. So, with the signing of the Prespa Agreement in June 2018, it looked as though at long last North Macedonia could begin the process of EU accession negotiations. However, on 18 October 2019, the European Council took the decision not to start accession talks, due to a veto imposed by French President Macron on the grounds that a new accession negotiations methodology should be put in place first. Macron’s decision (seconded by Denmark and the Netherlands) was a setback to the Republic’s ambitions,

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but a further blow would come on 17 November 2020 when neighbouring Bulgaria, an EU member state, vetoed the negotiation framework for North Macedonia’s accession talks with the European Union, despite the two countries having previously signed a bilateral Friendship Treaty in August 2017. Bulgaria had decided to veto its neighbour over issues of identity and history, claiming that the Macedonian language was a dialect of Bulgarian and that an artificial Macedonian identity was built on an anti-Bulgarian narrative (Bieber & Dimitrov, 2022). In an interview for the EU Observer on 14 December 2020, President Pendarovski commented that: ‘The mainstay of our identity is our language, after that, history, our shared history with our compatriots’. Pendarovski went on to add that: ‘The Bulgarians are saying that all of our history up to 1945 was Bulgarian. That everything from the tenth century up till then has been Bulgarian’, and concluded: ‘that’s absolute historical nonsense’ (Rettman, 2020). In mid-June 2022, France, which held the presidency of the Council of the EU, came up with a proposed solution. On 23 June, the proposal was initially rejected by Prime Minister Dimitar Kovachevski because the language and identity of the Macedonian people had not been respected in this French initiative (Magnusson, 2022). The Macedonian Foreign Minister Bujar Osmani clarified that change of some wording in the proposed text would be needed to make it acceptable. Still, on 24 June Macron’s proposal was adopted by the Bulgarian parliament with certain reservations, including the refusal to recognise the existence of the Macedonian language. On 30 June, President Macron announced a version of the deal that was to accommodate the concerns of both sides. Nonetheless, Bulgaria considered the text to be essentially the same and so accepted it, whereas many Macedonian and international experts found the changes to be rather ‘cosmetic’ (Magnusson, 2022). Since 2 July, there were large demonstrations against the French proposal and the Bulgarian demands in Skopje. All of which could be interpreted as a threat to the wider stability of the Balkan region. Bulgaria’s objections to the ethno-linguistic identity of the Macedonian people have been covered most thoroughly in Chapter 12 by Ognen Vangelov. Nevertheless, the upshot of this Bulgarian veto is that once again an outside power has blocked and put on hold the country’s ambitions for European integration. The problem with this Bulgarian revisionist perspective is that from a historiographical point of view, the idea that Macedonia and Bulgaria

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share a common history is rather limited, to say the least. It can only really be applied to intervals during the medieval period, with the First and Second Bulgarian Empires and later during the First and Second World Wars, when the Kingdom of Bulgaria invaded and occupied Macedonia, which then was, in the first case a constituent part of the Kingdom of Serbia and in the second case part of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. As for the First and Second Bulgarian Empires, between the seventh and fourteenth centuries, these were very much under Byzantine political, cultural and religious influence, in what the renowned scholar of the period Dimitri Obolensky (1971) had referred to as the Byzantine Commonwealth. As Byzantine power began to wane after the First Crusade and in the aftermath of the Serbian defeat at the Battle of Kosovo in 1389, the area of what is contemporary North Macedonia gradually became part of the Ottoman Empire and endured under Ottoman suzerainty until the Balkan Wars of 1912/1913. Then, between 1918 and 1940, Macedonia formed part of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and between 1944 and 1991, became a constituent republic of the Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia. Magnusson (2022) succinctly adds that the only stumbling block to this view of history is provided by the Macedonian revolutionaries who between 1878 and 1913 had fought for an autonomous Macedonia, separate from Bulgaria. The problem was that they were born either in the north of today’s Greece or in today’s North Macedonia, but often saw themselves as Bulgarians. This period is fully developed by Andrew Rossos in his Macedonia and the Macedonians (2008). Then when it comes to the Bulgarian interpretation of the idea of Macedonian ‘hate speech’, this provides us with perhaps another example of a neighbouring state’s over-sensitivity with regard to Bulgaria’s occupation of Macedonia during the Second World War being described as ‘fascist’. But one must always bear in mind that Bulgaria had been a member of the Axis powers that had rallied to Nazi Germany, and that as Magnusson (2022) rightly points out, ninety percent of the 7,000 Jews living in occupied Macedonia lost their lives in the Holocaust, with the majority being sent to the Treblinka concentration camp. Before the French proposal, successive EU presidencies (Germany, Portugal and Slovenia) invested time and energy in trying to resolve the crisis between Bulgaria and North Macedonia. Still, it was the version of the deal presented by President Macron on 30 June 2022 that the Macedonian authorities found acceptable as a solution to the Bulgarian blockade. By contrast, there was massive resentment amidst the general

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public, and many experts, intellectuals and prominent figures called for a rejection of this proposal. For example, Nikola Dimitrov (2022b), former Macedonian Foreign Minister who had signed the Prespa Agreement, called the French proposal a ‘debacle’ of Macedonian diplomacy which might allow for the opening of the EU accession negotiations (provided that the Macedonian constitution be changed to include the Bulgarians as a constituent ethnic community) but it will never lead to the desired membership of the EU because the latter will depend on the fulfilment of Bulgaria’s wishes which might turn the negotiation process into an ‘endless agony and torture’ for Macedonia. On 18 July, he resentfully observed that Bulgaria has received both European and Macedonian ‘guarantee for diktat and imposition of its narrative on history’ while clinging on its ‘shameful, primitive, hostile and anti-European declaration that it does not recognise the existence of the Macedonian language’ (Dimitrov, 2022c). Moreover, his father, Dimitar Dimitrov, a minister in the first Macedonian government, a university professor and a person who was once considered to be one of the most pro-Bulgarian figures in Macedonia, said that the French proposal is a victory for Putin and his Bulgarian proxy General Radev because it undermines the very principles of the European project. Writing in Deutsche Welle on 12 July 2022, Dimitar Dimitrov deemed the proposal as an ‘unfair offer’ in which President Macron is reflecting the European attitudes towards the Balkans of more than a century and a half ago, during which time the ‘concert of powers’ and the bigger picture revolved around the antagonism between Europe and Russia while the interests of the minor Balkan states did not matter. In a strongly worded article, Dimitar Dimitrov (2022a) asked for EU leaders to put a veto on the Bulgarian veto and enable North Macedonia to negotiate for EU integration. Ultimately, concluded Dimitrov, whilst the outcome of the war in Ukraine remains uncertain, what is certain is that Macron’s proposal is gaining ground in North Macedonia, because it feeds into growing Euroscepticism in the country and could seriously impact on the already damaged image of the EU in the region. Moreover, it triggers a ripple effect across the Balkans, in particular playing into the hands of Bulgarian nationalists and ultimately into the hands of Putin by opening up a Pandora’s box and releasing the forces of nationalism and irredentism fuelled by populism which could seriously destabilise the Balkans.

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Erwan Fouéré, former EU ambassador to Skopje, argued that the French proposal is a ‘poisoned chalice’ for North Macedonia with wider consequences and averred that if North Macedonia were to accept the French proposal to lift the Bulgarian veto on the country’s accession talks, ‘it would lock the country into a straitjacket with Bulgaria holding the key’ (Fouéré, 2022). He went on to express his concern that the demand that the Macedonian constitution should be changed to include a reference to the existence of a Bulgarian community in North Macedonia was not reciprocated by the Bulgarian government with reference to the Macedonian minority in Pirin Macedonia. He called the French proposal a ‘dismal failure of French diplomacy’ that ‘fails the basic rules for successful mediation’ as laid out in the OSCE’s guidelines and he went on to add that by taking Bulgaria’s side, which is the stronger party due to it already having EU membership, France was setting a ‘terrible precedent for future EU accession negotiations’. He advised North Macedonia to ‘stand firm’ and ‘throw the ball back into the EU’s court’ when the matter is taken up by the Czech government, which assumed the presidency of the European Council on 1 July 2022. International scholars and experts have also criticised the French proposal. For instance, Ulf Brunnbauer (2022), professor of Southeast and East European History at the University of Regensburg, called the deal ‘useless and dangerous’ because it introduced a precedent of turning a bilateral issue over history into an EU accession condition which might be used by the current EU member states to blackmail EU candidate countries in future. Also, Florian Bieber, professor of Southeast European History and Politics and Director of the Centre for Southeast European Studies at the University of Graz, in an article co-signed with Nikola Dimitrov, called the French proposal a ‘rotten deal’ (Bieber & Dimitrov, 2022). Furthermore, Gerald Knaus and Kristof Bender (2022) criticised the French initiative as yet another example of the lost transformative power of the EU accession process, which—according to these experts— now ‘resembles a bus without wheels, with North Macedonia discussing conditions for moving up a row of seats inside a vehicle going nowhere’. However, despite the strong opposition to the French proposal, it had been voted for by 68 members of the Macedonian parliament and on 16 July 2022 Prime Minister Dimitar Kovachevski confirmed that the government of North Macedonia had also accepted the deal. The opposition VMRO-DPMNE said that they would not vote for changing the Constitution to satisfy the Bulgarian demands, whilst the majority

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of the population were against the decision taken by the government. So, the French proposal lacks parliamentary support where a two-thirds majority is needed according to the Macedonian constitution. At the time of writing, opinion polls in North Macedonia reveal that 72% of Macedonians and 54% of the population as a whole are against the French proposal (Magnusson, 2022). Meanwhile, Bulgaria has made a serious provocation by supporting the opening of a ‘cultural club’ of ethnic Bulgarians in the Macedonian city of Bitola on 16 April 2022 that was named after the Nazi collaborator Ivan (Vancho) Mihajlov, the last leader of the IMRO, who is also notorious for his negation of the existence of a Macedonian national identity. The opening was attended ‘in an unofficial capacity’ by top Bulgarian politicians, including Prime Minister Kiril Petkov, Vice-President Iliyana Yotova and Foreign Minister Teodora Genchovska’ (Marusic, 2022). Also, an association of ethnic Bulgarians has been established in Ohrid and named after Tsar Boris III, king of Bulgaria between 1918 and 1943, who is also called ‘the Unifier’ for the occupation of the territories of Macedonia and Aegean Thrace over which Bulgarian nationalists laid irredentist claims ever since the 1878 Treaty of San Stefano. Many in Macedonia see these acts just as a beginning of a larger scheme for gradual ‘bulgarianisation’ in the years to come. The only recent development on the positive side, it seems, was the final overcoming of the 55-year schism between the Serbian and Macedonian Orthodox churches, with the former accepting the autocephalous status of the latter, which was announced on 24 May 2022 at the joint liturgy concelebrated by the Serbian patriarch Porfirije and the Macedonian archbishop Stefan in Skopje. To sum up, Macedonian internal rifts had been widened, and the prospect of EU integration—according to all serious assessments by foreign and domestic experts—had been turned into a nightmare of potentially endless Bulgarian demands and the perpetual destabilisation of the country—a fiasco for EU politics. The fulfilment of the Euro-Atlantic project is crucial not only to North Macedonia’s economic, social and political ambitions but also, given the ever-changing world of the New Cold War geopolitics in Europe, to the stability of the Balkans in general. The security and stability of Macedonia lies at the heart of the security and stability of the whole Balkan region. Against the background of renewed East–West tensions, North Macedonia is now sadly once again confronted with a new and deeply

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disconcerting crisis. No outside government should waive the Macedonian people’s right to self-determination. At the same time, as President Pendarovski observed recently, the real sign of whether or not a country is ready to become of a member of the European Union is: ‘…whether you are ready to have productive cooperation with the first neighbours and those who are in the same region’ (Sloboden pecat, 2021).

References Bakrevska Dodovska, A. (2017). Between eagle and the bear: US and Russian foreign policy towards the Republic of Macedonia, 1991–2016 (Unpublished MA Thesis). University American College Skopje. Bieber, F., & Dimitrov, N. (2022, July 12). North Macedonia’s EU accession talks—A rotten deal. EU Observer. http://www.euobserver.com/opinion/ 155491. Accessed 13 July 2022. Brunnbauer, U. (2022, July 8). Brunnbauer: Zoshto francuskiot predlog e beskorisen i opasen. Deutsche Welle. https://www.dw.com/mk/%D0%B1% D1%80%D1%83%D0%BD%D0%B1%D0%B0%D1%83%D0%B5%D1%80-% D0%B7%D0%BE%D1%88%D1%82%D0%BE-%D1%84%D1%80%D0%B0%D0% BD%D1%86%D1%83%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%B8%D0%BE%D1%82-%D0%BF% D1%80%D0%B5%D0%B4%D0%BB%D0%BE%D0%B3-%D0%B5-%D0%B1% D0%B5%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%BE%D1%80%D0%B8%D1%81%D0%B5%D0% BD-%D0%B8-%D0%BE%D0%BF%D0%B0%D1%81%D0%B5%D0%BD/a-624 05793. Accessed 9 July 2022. Dimitrov, D. (2022a, July 12). Francuskiot predlog kako lekcija po defetizam. Deutsche Welle. https://www.dw.com/mk/%D1%84%D1%80%D0%B0%D0% BD%D1%86%D1%83%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%B8%D0%BE%D1%82-%D0% BF%D1%80%D0%B5%D0%B4%D0%BB%D0%BE%D0%B3-%D0%BA%D0% B0%D0%BA%D0%BE-%D0%BD%D0%B0%D1%98%D0%B3%D0%BE%D0% BB%D0%B5%D0%BC%D0%B0-%D0%BF%D1%80%D0%BE%D0%BF%D0% B0%D0%B3%D0%B0%D0%BD%D0%B4%D0%B0-%D0%B7%D0%B0-%D0% B5%D0%B2%D1%80%D0%BE%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%B5%D0%BF%D1%82% D0%B8%D1%86%D0%B8%D0%B7%D0%BC%D0%BE%D1%82/a-62440717. Accessed 15 July 2022. Dimitrov, N. (2022b, July 1). Nikola Dimitrov za francuskiot predlog: Duri ni vo ‘pakuvanjeto na izmenite’ ne se potrudile mnogu. Nova Makedonija. https://novamakedonija.com.mk/makedonija/nikola-dimitrov-za-francu skiot-predlog-duri-ni-vo-pakuvanjeto-na-izmenite-ne-se-potrudile-mnogu/. Accessed 6 July 2022.

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Dimitrov, N. (2022c, July 18). Neverojatnata cena na edna fotografija. Deutsche Welle. https://www.dw.com/mk/%D0%BD%D0%B5%D0%B2%D0%B5%D1% 80%D0%BE%D1%98%D0%B0%D1%82%D0%BD%D0%B0%D1%82%D0%B0-% D1%86%D0%B5%D0%BD%D0%B0-%D0%BD%D0%B0-%D0%B5%D0%B4% D0%BD%D0%B0-%D1%84%D0%BE%D1%82%D0%BE%D0%B3%D1%80% D0%B0%D1%84%D0%B8%D1%98%D0%B0/a-62514811. Accessed 19 July 2022. Fouéré, E. (2022, June 28). Yet another failure of EU leadership in the Western Balkans. CEPS. https://www.ceps.eu/yet-another-failure-of-eu-leadershipin-the-western-balkans/?fbclid=IwAR3hGS5IdzfOo4xZSsiFPtoAbfdMlzdqxG x7VZO4n8bcSHZSjff_TertbvA. Accessed 29 June 2022. Knaus, G., & Bender, K. (2022, July 15). Elephants in Skopje—Balkan turtle race and Ukraine. ESI Newsletter. https://www.esiweb.org/newsletter/ele phants-skopje-balkan-turtle-race-and-ukraine. Accessed 16 July 2022. Magnusson, K. (2022, July 27). Francuskata greshka ja vloshi krizata. Nova Makedonija. https://novamakedonija.com.mk/makedonija/politika/ francuskata-greshka-ja-vloshi-krizata/. Accessed 28 July 2022. Marusic, S. J. (2022, April 18). Bulgarian club named after Nazi ally outrages North Macedonia. Balkan Insight. https://balkaninsight.com/2022/04/18/ bulgarian-club-named-after-nazi-ally-outrages-north-macedonia/. Accessed 18 April 2022. Obolensky, D. (1971). The Byzantine commonwealth: Eastern Europe, 500–1453. Praeger. Rettman, A. (2020, December 14). Interview: Does North Macedonia really exist? EU Observer. https://euobserver.com/eu-political/150370. Accessed 13 July 2022. Rossos, A. (2008). Macedonia and the Macedonians: A history. Hoover Institution Press. Sloboden pecat. (2021, January 30). Pendarovski: How we cooperate with our neighbors shows how ready we are for the EU . https://www.slobodenpecat. mk/en/pendarovski-od-toa-kolku-sorabotuvame-so-sosedite-se-gleda-kolkusme-podgotveni-za-eu/. Accessed 3 April 2021.

Index

A Abazi-Alili, Hyrije, 7, 105, 108 Abkhazia, 36 absolute dominance, 105–108 accession negotiations, 2, 5, 9, 38, 145, 146, 153, 157, 174, 209, 224, 227 accession process, 6, 13, 73, 171, 173, 202, 210–212, 228 accession talks, 2, 3, 6, 9, 24, 35, 38, 62, 207–209, 211, 220, 224, 225, 228 acquis communautaire, 174 Adriatic Charter, 53 Adriatic Sea, 38 Aegean Macedonia, 27 Afghanistan, 31, 87, 167, 168, 170 Africa, 11, 114, 168 Agency for Public Housing, 102 Albanian nationalism, 72 Albanians, 4, 8, 10, 13, 17, 24–26, 39, 46, 47, 49, 51–53, 55, 59, 62, 82, 83, 108, 114, 130, 148, 156, 158, 182, 184, 185, 201 Albanian separatists, 18

Alexander the Great\King Alexander \Alexander III, 12, 28, 181–188 Alliance for the Albanians (AA), 158 American, 16, 35, 54 American diplomacy, 4, 50 amnesty, 27, 33, 53, 127 ancestral homelands, 70 ancient heritage, 187 ancient Macedonians, 64, 73, 183, 184, 186, 188 Anderson, Benedict, 5, 69 Andeva, Marina, 11, 59, 172, 173, 175 Andonov-Chento, Metodija, 22 anticomania, 12, 13, 181, 182, 185 anti-communism, 114 Anti-fascist Assembly of the People’s Liberation of Macedonia (ASNOM), 22, 27, 183, 214 antiquisation, 12, 13, 182, 185, 189 Arachinovo, xiv, xv archbishop Stefan, 7, 229 Archideus, 186 Arifi, Teuta, 33 Aristotle, 186–188

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 R. Hudson and I. Dodovski (eds.), Macedonia’s Long Transition, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-20773-0

233

234

INDEX

armed conflict, 2, 5, 6, 18, 52, 61, 78, 182 Armenia, 37 Asia, 57, 114, 168, 188 associate member, 32 asylum, 11, 35, 164, 165, 167, 168, 170, 171, 173, 174 asylum seekers, 164, 165, 167, 168 Athens, 28, 47, 49, 72, 188 atomistic, 115 Australia, 87, 88, 114 Austria, 86, 167, 170 authoritarian rule, 56 autocephalous status, 7, 229 autochthonous, 180, 181 autocratic tendencies, 45 autonomous Macedonia, 4, 226 autonomous management, 57 Azerbaijan, 37

B Badinter Principle, 150 Badinteur Commission (Arbitrary Commission of the EC), x Bakoyannis, Dora, 64 Balkans Balkan Route, 1, 2, 11, 164, 168, 170, 223 Balkan Slavs, 180 Balkan Wars, 4, 15, 22, 27, 183, 213, 226 Baltic Way, 35 Baroque, 196 Battle of Kosovo, 4, 226 Beijing, 51 Belarus, 37 Belgium, 24, 165 Belgrade, 21, 22, 50, 52, 187, 212, 215, 217 Bender, Kristof, 6, 228 BESA, 25, 115

Biden, Joseph, 151, 156 Bieber, Florian, 3, 6, 32, 225, 228 bilateral border agreement, 52 bilateral dispute, 15 bilateral relations, 9, 64, 72, 145 Bitola, 7, 12, 37, 179, 229 Blace border crossing, xiii Black Monday, 138 Black Sea, 36 Blagoevgrad, 62 Bloody Thursday, 28 border fence, 169 Borisov, Boyko, 23, 62 Bosnia-Herzegovina Bosniaks, 17, 59 Bosnian crisis, 167 Bosphorus, 36 Bourdieu, Pierre, 5, 70 brain-drain, 7, 77 break-up of Yugoslavia, 20 British, 16 Brunnbauer, Ulf, 228 Brussels, 56, 57, 148, 156 Brussels Summit, xvi Bucharest Summit, 4, 9, 28, 31, 36, 54 Buchkovski, Vlado, xvi Bulgaria Bulgarian Communist Party (BCP), 215, 216 Bulgarian Declaration, 24 Bulgarian demands, 3, 6, 7, 23, 225, 228, 229 Bulgarian Empire, 3, 4, 226 Bulgarian Exarchate, 218, 219 Bulgarian fascist occupier, 210 bulgarianisation, 7, 229 Bulgarian occupation, 214 Bulgarian President, 208, 216 Bulgarian Principality, 218, 219 Bulgarians, 4, 5, 7, 24, 213, 216, 217, 219, 226, 227, 229

INDEX

Byzantine Byzantine Commonwealth, 4, 226

C Canada, 87, 88 candidate country, 2, 26, 224 capital market, 98, 99, 108 carrot and stick politics, 129 casus belli, 52 Çelebi, Evliya, 217 Central European Free Trade Agreement (CEFTA), 86 Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), 34 central planning economy, 6 Central Powers, 213 Central Securities Depository, 102 Centre for Crisis Management, 169, 174 China, 24, 51 Christian Democratic, 114 Christian faith, 183 Christian Orthodox, 185 Christians, 37 Christopoulos, Dimitris, 27, 28 clientelism clientelistic values, 125 Clinton, Hillary, 151, 158 Cold War, 36, 38 collateral damage, 57 collective identity, 6, 69, 73 Colourful Revolution, 1, 2, 13, 19, 32, 34, 37, 202, 203, 223 Comintern, 219 Commissioner for the European Neighbourhood Policy and Enlargement Negotiations, 154 common border, 49, 51, 55 Common European Asylum System, 173 Communism Communist Party, 26, 125

235

concert of powers, 5, 227 Constantinople, 27 Constitution Constitutional change, 8, 30 constitutional name, 13, 28–30, 36, 48, 65, 67, 71, 147, 197, 209 constitutional reforms, 61 Constitution of the Republic of Macedonia, 23, 113, 149, 166 Contact Group document, 55 Copenhagen criteria, 23, 72, 150 Corridor 10, 83 corruption, 1–3, 6, 10, 18, 19, 31, 34, 35, 83, 84, 87, 88, 125, 153, 155, 202, 204, 223 Council of Europe, 24, 49, 64, 73, 151, 164 credit rating, 88 Croatia, 16, 20, 40, 46, 48, 50, 53, 180 Crvenkovski, Branko, xii, xv cultural wars, 70 Cyrillic alphabet, 15 Czech Republic Czech government, 6, 228

D Dardanelles, 36 Daskalovski, Zhidas, 5, 6, 26, 28, 39, 61, 69, 117, 118, 121, 122 Dayton Dayton Agreement, 36, 50, 51 decentralisation, 61, 152 decentralised socialist system, 95 decision-making process, 34, 117, 121 declaration of independence, 2, 5, 26, 224 degenerative factionalism, 119 Democratic Army of Greece, 26 democratic backsliding, 2, 224 democratic deficit, 46

236

INDEX

Democratic Party of Albanians (DPA), 115, 132–136, 138–140, 148 Democratic Union for Integration (DUI), 33, 58, 114, 122, 132–136, 138, 140, 148, 149 democratisation, 10, 32, 33, 153 Denmark, 2, 3, 168, 224 Destabilisation, 4, 7, 25, 33, 47, 54, 156, 229 Detrez, Raymond, 218, 219 developing democracy, 116 Development Funds, 96, 97 D’Hondt’s formula, 114 Diaspora, 87, 89, 111, 114 Dimitrov, Dimitar, 5, 185, 227 Dimitrov, Georgi, 214 Dimitrov, Nikola, 1, 5, 6, 28, 30, 153, 223, 227, 228 Dionysian principle, 187 diplomatic recognition, 51 diplomatic relations, 37, 50, 51, 55, 58 dispersed ownership, 100, 105–107 division of powers, 113 Divo Naselje, xix Dodovski, Ivan, 12, 13, 187, 188 Dollar (USD), 87 domain réservé, 68 domestic jurisdiction, 67, 92 domestic political forces, 46 downward pressure, 88 Dramski theatre, 187 Dublin Regulation Dublin System, 173

E Eastern Partnership, 37 economic embargos, 45, 91 economic indicators, 46 economic performance, 32 economic relations, 147

economic stress, 47 Electoral Authoritarianism electoral fraud, 124 electoral model electoral lists, 118 embargo, 6, 28, 49, 80, 82, 182 emigration emigration crisis, 77 employee buy-out (EBO), 102 equidistance, 48 Essential Harvest, 145 Estonia, 35 ethnic balance, 18 ethnic communities, 2, 53 ethnic identity, 3, 15, 212, 215, 216, 220 ethnic minority, 46 ethnic nationalism, 13, 68, 202 ethnogenesis, 12 ethno-national belongings, 66 ethno-religious claims, 15 European Union (EU) EU acquis , 12, 171, 172, 175 EU ambassador, 5, 228 EU Observer, 3, 225 EU politics, 7, 229 EU regulations, 32 Euro (EUR), 81 Euro-Atlantic integration, 5, 9, 57, 62, 70, 146–149, 156, 157 Euro-Atlantic project, 1, 2, 7, 19, 20, 28–31, 35, 223, 229 Eurodac Regulation, 173 Euronews, 170 European Agenda on Migration, 167 European Arbitrage Commission, 63 European Asylum Support Office, 167

INDEX

European Commission (EC), 34, 146, 148, 150–154, 164, 165, 167, 171, 208, 209, 211 European Commission Directives, xiv European Common Market, 87 European Council, 2, 6, 23, 146, 150, 151, 156, 209, 224, 228 European Council Conclusions, 151, 211 European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), 215 European Debt Crisis/European sovereign debt crisis, 7, 18, 89 European integration, 3, 18, 32, 146, 157, 201, 225 European Parliament, 164, 215 European Union Special Envoy to Macedonia, 187 European Union Special Representative (EUSR), 145 Europol, 167 Euroscepticism, 5, 227 Eurostat, 165 Eurozone, 89 explanatory memorandum, 211, 216 external resistance, 47 external stimulus, 4, 54 external threats, 4, 45, 48, 58 F factionalism, 115 Faculty of Dramatic Arts, 187 failed state, 4, 52 fascist, 4, 226 federalised Europe, 31 financial integration, 87 First Crusade, 4, 226 First World War, 15, 22, 211, 213, 214 fiscal policy, 81 flawed democracy, 32

237

forced voting, 124 Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO), 33 foreign capital, 101 foreign debt, 88 Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), 83, 85–89, 91, 108 foreign policy, 4, 26, 30, 35, 36, 48, 50, 68, 208, 213, 216 former-socialist bloc, 6, 7, 79 former socialist countries, 95 Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM), 15, 28, 31, 47, 62–64, 67, 71 Fouéré, Erwan, 5, 6, 228 fragmentation, 115 Framework Agreement, 52, 54, 58 Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities, 215 Framework Position, 210, 211, 216 France, 3, 6, 86, 225, 228 Freedom House, 123, 124, 139 freedom of association, 113 freedom of expression, 67 freedom of press, 72 free movement of people, 11, 163, 164 French proposal, 3–7, 225–229 Friendly Relations Declaration, 73 Friendship Treaty (2017), 3, 14, 209, 225 Frontex, 165, 167, 170 Front for Democratic Macedonia (FRODEM), 115

G gas pipeline, 37 GDP (Gross domestic product), 78, 83, 85, 87, 89, 90, 168 Genchovska, Teodora, 7, 229

238

INDEX

General Assembly Resolution, 63, 70, 71 Geneva Convention (1951), 171, 173 geopolitics, 2, 7, 10, 51, 158, 182, 229 Georgia, 35–37 Georgievska-Jakovleva, Loreta, 12, 13 Georgievski, Ljubˇco, 185 Georgievski, Ljubisha, 13, 187, 188 German Mark, 6, 80, 81, 99 Germany, 4, 86, 87, 165, 168, 169, 226 Gevgelija, 168, 170 Glagolitic alphabet, 15 Gligorov, Kiro, 21, 49 Global Financial Crisis, 18, 89 globalisation, 183, 200, 201, 203 glorious past, 13, 197, 200 good governance, 32 good neighbourly relations, 23, 24, 149 government corruption, 1, 223 Great Britain, 86 Greater Bulgaria, 22, 36, 213 Greater Serbia, 36 Great Recession, 89, 91 Greece Greek Civil War, 26, 27 Greek Communist Party, 26 Greek crisis, 92 Greek embargo, 28, 49, 80, 82, 91, 182 Greek nationalism, 68, 184 Greek veto, 9, 36, 52, 146, 147, 182, 208 green-field investors, 101 grievance, 8, 14, 22, 61, 218 Gruevski, Nikola, xvi–xx, 13, 28, 29, 32–35, 154, 156, 159, 195–197, 201, 203 guerrilla war, 184

H Hague, xvii Hahn, Johannes, 154 hate speech, 4, 24, 226 Hellenic civilisation, 188 Hellenization, 217 Heraclea Lyncestis, 179 historical claims historical heritage, 64 historical myths, 184 historical rights, 69 Hitler, Adolf, 213 Holbrooke, Richard, 49 Holocaust, 4, 226 horizontal accountability, 116 Hudson, Robert, 3, 12, 18, 36, 37 humanitarian aid humanitarian assistance, 31 humanitarian protection, 172 human rights Human Rights Covenants, 73 human rights treaties, 67 Hungary, 35, 167, 170 hyperinflation, x, 79, 97

I Ibar river, 26 identity crisis, 13, 197 identity politics, 3, 12, 13, 23, 186, 188, 201 idiosyncratic form of democracy, 9 Ilinden Ilinden Uprising, 27 Illyrians, 25, 181, 185 imagined community, 70 impoverishment, 6, 79 income inequality, 79 independent judiciary, 154 India, 181 inflation, 6, 77, 80, 108 informal politics, 128

INDEX

insider ownership, 102 institutional confidence institutional crisis, 33 institutional framework, 112 institutional trust, 112 insurance system, 86 intelligence services, 34 intense corruption, 6 interdisciplinary committee on historical and educational issues, 209 interest rates, 88 interethnic co-habitation interethnic relations, 48 interethnic structure, 46 interethnic tensions, 5, 45, 51 interfaith co-habitation, 55 interference, 2, 29, 34, 37, 67, 101, 224 intergovernmental conference, 210 Interim Accord, xi, xvii, 5, 49, 58, 64 internal affairs internal condition, 146, 153, 156 internal conflict, 46, 52, 115, 173 internal democratisation, 153 internal destabilisation, 25, 33, 156 Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organisation – Democratic Party for Macedonian National Unity (VMRO-DPMNE), ix, xiii, xv–xx, xxii, 3, 6, 32–34, 114, 120, 132–138, 140, 148, 159, 184, 228 Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organisation – People’s Party (VMRO-NP), 115 Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organisation (IMRO), 7, 27, 204, 229 international affirmation international attention, 46 international border, 49

239

international community, 9, 46, 48, 54, 68, 112, 126, 127, 129, 131, 150, 156 international conflict, 46 international institutions, 30, 31, 63 international investors, 57 international isolation, 49 international law, 66–68, 183 international order, 66 international organisations, 2, 46, 49, 53, 64, 67, 70, 73, 80, 224 international political factors, 112 international protection, 12, 173 international recognition, 4, 19, 63, 72, 82 international security, 49 international visibility, 46 International Court of Justice (ICJ), xvii, 64, 70, 71 International Monetary Fund, 80 International Organisation for Migration (IOM), 163, 170 International Republican Institute, 38 International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), 31 intervention, 9, 36, 51, 52, 96, 112, 220 intra-party democracy, 112, 115–120, 126, 127, 130 irredentism, 5, 27, 69, 227 irregular migration, 171, 172, 174 Italy, 86, 87, 170 Ivanov, Gjorge, xvii–xx, 13, 25, 33, 149, 169

J Janeva, Katica, xix, 33, 155 Jelavich, Barbara, 5, 27, 70 Jews, 4, 226 jihadist, 169

240

INDEX

Jointly Controlling Minority, 106, 107 Judicial Council, 154 judicial reform, 31 juridical personality, 67

K KFOR (Kosovo Force), xiii, 31 Kichevo, xiv Kingdom of Yugoslavia, 4, 21, 226 king of Bulgaria, 7, 229 King Philip II of Macedon/Philip of Macedon, 28, 179, 180 Knaus, Gerald, 6, 228 Kofos, Evangelos, 28, 30, 64, 65 Koneski, Blazhe, xi, 215 Kosovo Kosovar Albanians, 10 Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), 26 Kosovo war, 167 Kostov, Hari, xvi Kotsias, Nikos, xx Kovachevski, Dimitar, xxiii, 3, 6, 35, 225, 228 Krchovski, Joakim, 217 Kremlin, 36, 37 Kumanovo, xv, xix, 18, 25, 37 Kumanovo Agreement, xiii

L labour market, 90 Latvia, 35, 40 Lavrov, Sergei, 37 Laws Law on Asylum and Temporary Protection (LATP), 168, 171–173 Law on foreigners, 173 law on languages, 25 Law on Social Capital, 95

Law on the Transformation of Enterprises with Social Capital, 7, 97, 108 leaders’ meetings, 9, 112, 127, 129–131 leftist populist, 54 legal jurisdiction, 65 Levica (the Left), 115 liberal democracy, 5, 57 liberal-democratic ideas, 66 Liberal-democratic party (LDP), 115, 119, 120, 132–135, 138 liberal nationalism, 202 Liberal party (LP), 115 Lidington, David, 33 Lijphart, Arend, 150 limited liability companies, 97 Lisbon Declaration, x Lithuania, 35 Lucas, Edward, 36, 37, 40 Luxembourg, 32, 85, 165

M Macedonia Macedonian army, 18, 169 Macedonian Assembly, ix Macedonian denar, 81 Macedonian diplomacy, 5, 227 Macedonian economy, 6, 7, 77, 78, 82, 83, 85, 89, 91 Macedonian ethnic minority, 210 Macedonian folklore, 182 Macedonian government, 4, 5, 7, 8, 10, 20, 23, 27, 29, 32, 37, 39, 40, 48, 72, 145, 148, 195, 227 Macedonian historiography, 183 Macedonian history, 12, 19, 27, 180, 187, 196 Macedonian irredentism, 15, 27 Macedonian issue, 65

INDEX

Macedonian language, 3, 14, 19, 21–23, 62, 73, 181, 188, 209–211, 214–216, 225 Macedonian literature, 188 Macedonian minority, 6, 24, 68, 215, 228 Macedonian national identity, 7, 12, 13, 70, 180, 181, 201, 229 Macedonian nationalism, 6, 72, 182 Macedonian Orthodox Church, 7, 19, 21, 37, 58, 62, 73, 156, 185, 229 Macedonian Parliament (Sobranie), ix Macedonian President, 49, 50, 169 Macedonian Prime Minister, 185 Macedonian Privatisation Agency, 99 Macedonian question, 208, 214, 220 Macedonian revolutionaries, 4, 226 Macedonians, 4, 5, 7, 8, 10, 12–14, 17, 18, 22, 27, 39, 47, 51, 53, 55, 64, 66, 71, 82, 87, 88, 114, 130, 179, 180, 182–186, 188, 196, 201, 209, 214, 215, 229 Macedonian Young Lawyers Association (MYLA), 166 Macedonia Square, 29 macroeconomic stability, 6, 81 Macron, Emmanuel, 2–5, 224–227 majoritarian model, 8, 113, 114 Management buy-out (MBO), 102 Market socialism, 96 Markovi´c, Ante, 96 Markovi´c Law, 96, 97, 99 Markovikj, Nenad, 9, 124 mass privatisation, 98, 102 May Agreement, 129, 136 media freedom, 57, 127 mediated agreement, 61

241

Mediation, 49, 72, 112, 127, 131 Mediterranean, 36, 170 Melbourne, 27 member of the European Parliament (MEPs), 208, 215 Membership Action Plan (MAP), 31, 52 membership negotiations, 3 Member States, 87, 164–167, 173, 174 Mickovikj, Slobodan, 13, 186 Middle East, 11, 168 migrant crisis, 169, 170, 174 Mihajlov, Ivan (Vancho), 7, 229 military crisis, 145 military interests, 36 Miloševi´c, Slobodan, 51 Minister for Europe (UK), 33 Minister of Culture (Macedonia), 187 Minister of Foreign Affairs (Macedonia), 184 Ministry of Economy (Macedonia), 102 Ministry of Finance (Macedonia), 102 Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Macedonia), 64, 65 Ministry of Interior (MOI) (Macedonia), 88, 166–169 minority groups, 105 Misirkov, Krste, 219 Mitrovica, 26 mixed majoritarian model, 8 Moldova, 37 monetary independence, 79 monetary policy, 80 Monetary targeting, 80 monetary union, 6, 77, 79 Monitored Dominance, 106, 107 Monitoring Mission, 48 Montenegro, 17, 20, 27, 38, 164, 181 multiculturalism, 183

242

INDEX

multiparty democracy, 111 multiparty systems, 111, 130 Muslims, 55, 56 N name dispute, xvii, 1–5, 7, 9, 10, 14, 19, 20, 26–29, 39, 40, 47, 62, 64, 66, 69, 72, 82, 91, 146–148, 156, 157, 198, 223, 224 national awakening, 27, 70, 219 National bank of Macedonia, 92 national consciousness, 24, 216, 218 National Democratic Party (NDP), 115 national identification, 187 national identity, 7, 12, 13, 66, 70, 180, 181, 184, 200–202, 218, 219, 229 nationalising statehood, 47 nationalism, 5, 208, 227 nationalists, xx, 5, 7, 25, 72, 227, 229 national legislation, 149, 171, 172 National Liberation Army (NLA), xiv, xv, xix, 18, 25, 52, 53, 83, 182 national minorities, 69 national narrative, 5, 12, 47, 69, 70, 182, 183, 189 National Strategy, 172 National Theatre, 196 nation-building, 69 nation-building processes, 47, 69, 70, 218, 220 NATO Parliamentary Assembly, 30 natural resources, 17, 83 Nazi collaborator, 7, 229 Nazi Germany, 4, 226 Negotiation Framework, 2, 3, 9, 211, 225 Negotiation Framework Agreement, 62 Negotino–Klechovce gas pipeline, 37 neoclassicism, 196

nepotism, 18, 125 Netherlands, 2, 3, 224 New Cold War, 7, 158, 229 New Social-democratic Party (NSDP), 115, 138 New York, xi, 64 Nimetz, Matthew, 30 non-governmental organisation (NGO), 215 Normative Power in Europe (NPE), 32 North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), xi–xiii, xvi, xvii, xix–xxii, 2–6, 9, 10, 13, 19–21, 25, 26, 28–33, 35–40, 46, 48, 50–55, 58, 63, 64, 66, 72, 73, 83, 145–148, 150, 151, 156–158, 182, 196, 197, 202, 204, 208, 209, 224 North Macedonia, xxi–xxiii, 1–7, 9, 10, 14, 15, 19, 23, 24, 30, 35, 38–40, 62, 72, 73, 145, 146, 157, 158, 207–213, 216–220, 223–229 O oasis of peace, 2, 4, 21, 46, 224 Obolensky, Dimitri, 4, 226 official language, xv, 25, 210, 214 Ohrid, xv, xxiii, 7, 26, 187, 229 Ohrid Framework Agreement (OFA), xv, 3–5, 8, 9, 24, 26, 32, 35, 57, 61, 126, 129, 136, 146–152, 182, 186 Ohrid Summer Festival, 186 Old Church-Slavonic, 217 One-China policy, 51 open economy, 81, 82 Operation Concordia, 145 operation Horseshoe, 10 Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE),

INDEX

xii, 6, 34, 48, 49, 53, 64, 122, 123, 228 organised crime, 31, 153 Orthodox Christianity, 37 Orthodox Church, 7, 19, 27, 62, 156, 229 Orthodoxy, 36 Osmani, Bujar, 3, 225 Ottoman, 27, 183, 212, 213, 217, 218 Ottoman Empire, 4, 15, 22, 36, 69, 217, 218, 226 Ottoman suzerainty, 4, 226 outside ownership, 102 P paganism, 185 Pakistan, 167, 170 panhellenism, 184 panillyrism, 184 Pan-Slavism, 36 panslavonic unity, 180 panthracism, 184 Parliament, xx, 23, 30, 49, 58, 61, 113, 114, 126, 129, 130, 138, 139, 148–150, 154, 157, 159, 164, 187, 215 parliamentary boycott, 126 parliamentary crisis, 126, 129, 136 parliamentary elections, xvi, xxii, 111, 114, 122, 136, 140 parliamentary group, 117 particularistic societies, 128 partitocracy (partitocrazia), 112, 122 partization, 125 Partnership Action Plan on Terrorism, 31 Partnership for Peace (PfP), xi, xii, 4, 21, 31, 50, 64 partocratic, 112 Party for Democratic Prosperity (PDP), 39, 115, 136

243

party leaders, xxiii, 117, 118, 120–123, 129 party patronage, 32, 116 patriarch Porfirije, xxiii, 7, 229 patrimonial values, 125 peacekeeping operation, 50, 51 Pejchinovikj, Kiril, 217 Pendarovski, Stevo, xxi, xxiii, 1–4, 7, 15, 18, 20–25, 27, 30, 31, 223, 225, 230 People’s Republic of Macedonia, 68 Petkov, Kiril, 7, 229 Pettifer, James, 2 Phillips, David, 20, 52, 151 Phillips, John, 2 Pirin Macedonia, 6, 15, 22, 214, 215, 228 plebiscite, 66 Plevneliev, Rossen, 208 pluralism, 111, 113, 130 political asylum, 35 political autonomy, 47 political clientelism, 8, 112, 123, 124, 127 political corruption, 2, 10, 18, 34 political crisis, 28, 33, 45, 57, 114, 129, 145, 148, 150, 152, 153, 156, 208 political dialogue, 10, 57, 125–127, 129, 130, 147 political divide, 57 political independence, 68 political instability, 6, 83, 101 political Islam, 4, 55 political left, 114 political opposition, 48, 57, 124, 136 political parties, 8, 9, 25, 32, 40, 58, 98, 112–116, 118–127, 129, 130, 136, 148, 154, 155, 215 political patrimonialism, 131 political pluralism, 113, 130 political stability, 83, 84, 88, 151, 153

244

INDEX

political stalemates, 57 political system, 8, 9, 69, 111, 115, 120, 122, 129, 130, 146 politicization, 34, 218 polytheism, 185 populism, 5, 227 Portugal, 4, 226 post-socialist transition, 16 Poulton, Hugh, 2 power sharing, xv, 61, 117 power-sharing mechanism, 4, 47, 52, 53 Prague, 53 president, 1, 4, 22, 40, 117, 119–123, 132, 187, 223 President of Macedonia, xvi, xvii, 33 Prespa Agreement, xxi, 1, 2, 4, 5, 9, 14, 15, 19, 20, 23, 30, 38, 72, 157, 182, 209, 223, 224, 227 Priebe, Reinhard Priebe’s Report, 34, 148, 153, 154 prime minister, xii, xv–xx, xxii, xxiii, 3, 6, 7, 32, 33, 149, 154, 156, 159, 195–197, 201, 225, 228, 229 Pristina, 55 privatisation processes, 6–8, 78, 79, 95, 97–101, 108, 109 privatisation, x, 6–8, 77, 79, 95–102, 108, 109 Progress Report, 146, 150–152 Prohor Pchinjski Monastery, 22 proportional electoral model, 111 prosperity, 32, 39, 50, 183, 196 provisional reference, 72 Przhino Agreement, xix, 4, 10, 32, 129, 146, 147, 153, 154, 156, 159 public finance, 88 public governance, 87 public opinion, 12, 27, 153, 216 Public Prosecutor’s Office, 155

Pulevski, Gjorgija/Pulevski, Georgi, 183, 219 Putin, Vladimir, 2, 5, 36, 224, 227 Pyramid scheme, xii

Q Qualification Directive (2004), 171 quantitative model, 121 quasi-privatisation, 147

R Radev, Rumen, 5, 227 radical Islam, 45, 56 reconciliation, 9, 53, 146, 147, 149 Reding, Viviane, 165 referendum, 30, 39, 47, 54, 66, 111, 113, 136 Referendum on decentralisation, 54 refugee crisis refugee management, 169, 170 refugees, 10, 11, 18, 25, 31, 45, 51, 56, 83, 167–171, 173, 174 refugee status, 12, 170, 173 regional cooperation, 22, 32 regional development, 87 regional security, 50 Reka, Blerim, 1, 9, 10, 40, 147, 149, 150, 153, 157, 223 remittances, 85, 87, 89, 109 Republic of Macedonia, 1, 5, 8, 11, 27, 28, 48, 50, 64–66, 70, 98, 113, 115, 118, 130, 136, 139, 145, 147, 150–152, 154, 156, 158, 164–167, 169, 171, 172, 174, 200, 208, 209 resource distribution, 116, 131 restructuring, 87 return of Antiquity, 180 revanchism, 15 revisionist discourse, 12, 185, 188

INDEX

right to self-determination, 6, 7, 66, 73, 230 right-wing, 34, 54 Roma, 17, 59, 165, 166 Romania, 6, 40, 88, 213, 217 Romanticist anachronism, 183 Rose-Roth Seminar, 30 Rossos, Andrew, 2, 4, 19, 20, 25, 27, 39, 226 rule of law, 24, 32–34, 72, 113, 153 ruling coalition, 154 Russia, 2, 3, 5, 20, 24, 29, 35–37, 40, 98, 156, 159, 213, 224, 227 Russian dominance, 180 Russian Federation, 2, 36, 224 Russian Orthodox Church, 37 Russo-Turkish war, 213

S safe areas, 170 Sarajevo, 181, 217 Saudi Arabia, 55 Scandinavia, 88 Schengen Schengen Area, 165 Schengen visa restrictions, 56 Sea of Marmara, 36 secondary privatisation, 102 Second World War, 4, 21, 22, 27, 36, 210, 213, 214, 216–218, 226 Secretariat for Implementation (OFA), 152 Secretary-General, 49 Secretary of State, 151, 158 security security concerns, 49 Security Council, 21, 29, 49, 50, 71 Security Council Resolution, 71 security services, 34, 47 selectorate, 120–123, 130

245

self-determination, 66, 67, 73 self-employment, 89 self-management system, 96 separation of powers, 8, 124 Serbia, 3, 4, 10, 16, 19–22, 25, 27, 34, 47, 48, 52, 58, 62, 72, 78, 80, 83, 156, 164, 169, 170, 181, 213, 217, 226 Serbian Orthodox Church, 21, 22, 37 Serbs, 17, 21, 180, 181, 189, 219 shared history, 13, 23, 208 skilled labour, 89 Skopje 2014, 12–14, 29, 33, 182, 185, 189, 195–199, 201–203 Slav-Macedonian minority, 26 Slavonic, 12, 13, 27, 71, 73, 180, 181, 183, 185, 189, 201 Slavonic population, 211 Slavophilism, 180 Slavophone, 25 Slavs, 15, 179–181, 183, 184 Slovakia, 40, 212 Slovenia, 4, 20, 40, 46, 78, 181, 226 Smilkovci, xviii Smilkovci Lake massacre, xviii Smith, Anthony, 5, 70 Social Democratic Union of Macedonia (SDSM), 3, 25, 33, 34, 114, 120, 124, 132–139, 148, 149, 153, 158, 159 Social Democrats, 25 Socialism, 96 Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY), 4, 19, 51, 113, 226 socialist monopartism, 113 Socialist Party (SP), 115, 136 Socialist Republic of Macedonia, 12, 22, 28, 39, 68, 180 Socially owned enterprise (SOE), 7, 95 societal distrust, 131

246

INDEX

Sofia, 14, 22, 62, 187, 209, 211, 216 soft power, 2, 37, 224 Somalia, 167 Soros, George, 34 South-eastern Europe, 17, 36, 189 South Ossetia, 36 South Slavonic Literature, 186 South Stream, 37 Soviet, 36 Soviet relations, 36 Soviet Union, 2, 36, 215, 224 Special Prosecutor, 10, 33, 148, 153–155, 159 Special Prosecutor’s Office, 127, 156, 185 Stabilisation and Association Agreement (SAA), 2, 85, 87, 145, 150, 224 Stabilisation and Association Council, 152 Stabilisation and Association Process (SAP), 85, 171 stabilisation package, 80 stability, 3, 5, 7, 21, 25, 26, 28, 29, 38, 48–51, 54–56, 62, 72, 151, 157, 158, 225, 229 stagnant economy, 6, 77 Stalin, Joseph, 36, 212, 215 state capture, 3, 6, 10, 18, 19, 34, 35, 116, 148, 152 State Pension Fund, 99 State Prosecutor, 156 state security, 47 state sovereignty, 67 Stoltenberg, Jens, 30 strategic interests, 36 Sts. Clement and Naum, 184 Sts. Cyril and Methodius, 14, 15, 184, 198 Sts. Cyril and Methodius University, 37 subsidiary protection, 171, 172

sub-state nationalism, 36 successor state, 7, 16, 19, 20, 36 sultanistic, 9, 112, 121, 130 superpower, 36 Supreme Court, 156 sustainable development, 32, 201 Sweden, 87, 165, 168 Switzerland, 87, 165 Synod (Macedonian Orthodox Church), 185 Syria, 168, 170 Syrian refugees, 56

T Taiwan, 51 Tanács, Gábor, 170 Tanushevci, xiv Tanushevci Incident, xiv tariffs, 87 TAT savings bank, xii technical government, 148, 153, 154 technological-industrial development zones, 89 territorial claims, 63 territorial demands, 52 territorial integrity, 39, 45, 57, 68 territorial organization, 129, 136 territorial sovereignty, 68 Terrorism, xix terrorist attack, 169 Tetovo, xi, xiv, xv, 25, 55, 58 Thessaloniki, 47, 64 Titoist, 15, 27 Tito, Josip Broz, 12, 22, 27, 180, 183, 187, 212, 214–216, 220 Toronto, 27 totalitarianism, 210 trade blockade, 47 trade embargo, 28 Trade Union, 99, 109 Trajkovski, Boris, xiii, xvi

INDEX

transit country, 11 transition, 1–3, 7, 8, 10, 16, 18, 19, 28, 39, 45, 47, 48, 57, 77, 83, 86, 96, 101, 102, 125, 128, 197, 199, 224 transition period, 79, 88 transparency, 32, 35 Transparency Macedonia, 125 Treaty of Berlin, 22, 213 Treaty of San Stefano, 7, 14, 36, 213, 229 Treblinka concentration camp, 4, 226 trilateral status, 145 Tsar Boris III, 7, 229 Tsar Liberator–Alexander II, 36 Tsar Samuel, 217 Tsar Simeon, 217 Tsipras, Alexis, 5 Tupurkovski, Vasil, 12, 183 Turkey, 6, 9, 22, 37, 54, 72, 146, 167, 168, 170 Turks, 17, 59

U Ukraine, 2, 5, 35, 37, 227 unemployment, 8, 18, 83 unemployment rate, 7, 79, 90, 91, 168 United Kingdom (UK), 33, 34 United Nations (UN) UNESCO, 24, 73 United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), 167, 174 United Nations Preventive Deployment Force (UNPREDEP), xi, 2, 21, 50, 51, 224 United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR), x, xi, 2, 21, 48, 50, 224

247

United Nations Security Council (UNSC), x, xi, xiii, 21, 29, 50 UN protectorate, 52 UN sanctions, 83 United States (US) US Liaison Office, xi US Vice-President, 151, 156 universal education, 218 University of Graz, 6, 228 University of Regensburg, 6, 228 University of Skopje, 12 unskilled workers, 88 unstable region, 46 V Vance, Cyrus, 49 Vangelov, Ognen, 3, 14, 15, 185, 225 Vardar Macedonia, 22 Vardar River, 30 Venetological theory, 181, 189 Vergina Sun/Star of Vergina, xii, 28, 73 veto, x, xiii, xxi–xxiii, 2–6, 9, 15, 31, 46, 51, 52, 55, 62, 146, 147, 182, 207–209, 211, 212, 216, 220, 224, 225, 227, 228 Vienna, 170 Vienna Convention, 67 Vienna summit, 170 Vinojug, 168 Visa liberalization, 164, 165, 171 Vlach(s), 17, 185 vote buying, 116, 124 W wage control, 81 war war crimes, 53 Warsaw Summit, xix, 158 Wars of Yugoslav Secession, 2, 224 Washington DC, 50

248

INDEX

Washington Summit, xiii Western Balkans, xix, 1, 2, 19, 24, 29, 36–38, 86, 149, 164, 165, 171, 174 Western Europe, 120, 168 Western intervention, 51 Western orientation, 49 wiretapped materials, 32, 33, 124, 129 Wiretapping scandal/wiretapping affair/tapes/bombs, xix, 1, 2, 8, 14, 28, 32, 33, 35, 127, 129, 153, 202, 223 workers’ councils, 96 workers’ self-management, 96 workforce, 7, 77 working class, 6, 79 World Bank, 17, 83, 88 World Media rankings, 127 World Trade Organisation (WTO), 87 X Xhaferri, Talat, 149

Y Yeltsin, Boris, 36 Yotova, Iliyana, 7, 229 Yugoslavia Federal Peoples Republic of Yugoslavia, 22 Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY), xiii, 4, 31, 39, 48, 50, 51, 83 Yugoslav-Bulgarian (neighbourly) relations, 214 Yugoslav dinar, x Yugoslav leaders, 95 Yugoslav People’s Army (JNA), 21

Z Zaev, Zoran, xviii, xx, xxii, xxiii, 2, 3, 5, 23, 25, 28–30, 32, 34, 35, 138, 149, 156 Zagreb, 50 Zagreb Summit, xiv Zhivkov, Todor, 216