“The Sun is also a star”: The foreign policy issue in the Republic North Macedonia EU-integration

Abstract

The article is devoted to the foreign policy aspect of the EU-integration of the Republic of North Macedonia. The main attention of the article is paid not only to the interaction of official Skopje and Brussels, but also to the problems of the regional dimension of integration processes. Three main regional challenges for Macedonia are considered: the Macedonian name dispute, the Political views on the Macedonian language and the Albanian issue. The last one is not only about the rights and claims of the Albanian community of the country, but also It is the issue which seriously affecting Macedonia bilateral relations with neighboring Albania, the so-called “Republic of Kosovo”, Serbia and Montenegro. In the course of the study, the main contradictions of the parties were analyzed, the stages of the integration process of Macedonia in relation to NATO and the EU were highlighted, and a forecast was made regarding the prospects of the Skopje state to leave the top ten applicants and become a full member of the EU. Based on the results of the study, we came to the conclusion that in the future it is equally likely that both the successful resolution of existing conflicts in the case of a new focus of Brussels on the problems of the Western Balkans, and the freezing of existing contradictions and, even, under certain circumstances, the resumption of seemingly subsided memory wars, as this happened with the Political views on the Macedonian language in Macedonian- Bulgarian relations.