Commentary following the European Commission Report on the Republic of North Macedonia from 4 November 2025
The European Commission does not find any setbacks in any area, i.e. chapter, the fact that there is no progress in Chapter 23: Judiciary and Fundamental Rights and limited progress in Chapter 24: Justice, Freedom and Security, the key chapters on the rule of law, decisive for the pace of negotiations, is a cause for concern.
In terms of meeting the obligations of membership, the country still maintains a moderate level of preparation, with a slight improvement forward in only one chapter, the Free Movement of Capital, as a result of meeting the obligations of membership in the EU’s Single Euro Payments Area. In comparison to all the other candidates at the moment, our overall alignment is not negligible, but the advancing of Montenegro and the accelerated alignment of Albania as “frontrunners“ is quite clear“.
Progress is good in four chapters, while in the rest, to a significant level, there is only a small shift or stagnation. In that regard, we look worse than the other candidates, which are assessed to have progressed more in the past year, especially Montenegro, Albania, Ukraine and Moldova, which the Commission singles out as leading candidate countries. If this trend continues, there is a risk of not being able to keep up with the other countries in terms of the relatively high level of harmonisation, which in the Macedonian case was achieved much earlier than in the other candidate countries.
In this document, we analyse the trends at a cluster/chapter level in the 2025 report, focusing on critical points, as well as the new recommendations by the Commission. At the end of the commentary, an analysis of the harmonisation in the course of the previous years is included.