European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen arrives in Skopje on Friday with North Macedonia’s EU bid stalled and its government seeking a more direct European role in talks with Bulgaria — just as reports suggest Brussels is drawing up clearer accession roadmaps for four other candidate countries.
SKOPJE, Sept 29 (BalkanView) – European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen will visit North Macedonia on Friday for talks with its political leadership as Skopje presses for greater EU involvement in its dispute with neighbouring Bulgaria and questions reports that it has been left outside a new initiative for the bloc’s most advanced membership candidates.
Von der Leyen is due to meet President Gordana Siljanovska-Davkova and Prime Minister Hristijan Mickoski during the final stop of a Western Balkans tour that begins in Albania on Wednesday and also takes her to Kosovo and Montenegro.
Her visit comes at a sensitive moment for North Macedonia.
The country formally began EU accession negotiations in 2022 but has been unable to move to the next stage because parliament has not adopted constitutional amendments required under the negotiating framework.
Those changes would add Bulgarians and several other communities to the constitution.
Mickoski’s government says it remains committed to EU membership but wants stronger guarantees that further concessions will not be followed by additional bilateral demands from Bulgaria.
Skopje is now proposing another element: bringing the European Union, or potentially NATO, more directly into future talks with Sofia.
Skopje wants a third party at the table
Mickoski said talks with Bulgaria should continue but argued that representatives of the EU or NATO should be present.
Such a format, he said, would allow the arguments of both countries to be heard objectively.
Foreign Minister Timcho Mucunski has made a similar proposal, saying European institutions or individual EU member states should participate in future discussions.
For Skopje, the argument is primarily about trust and predictability.
The government says years of bilateral negotiations have failed to resolve the dispute and that European involvement could make it more difficult for either side to interpret agreements differently later.
Bulgaria has responded that North Macedonia’s accession is already a European process governed by an agreed negotiating framework and EU institutions.
Sofia says it remains open to dialogue but insists that commitments already incorporated into the accession process must be implemented.
That leaves von der Leyen entering a dispute in which the two governments do not merely disagree over the substance of the problem.
They also differ over how the next negotiations should be conducted.
Will Brussels accept a bigger role?
That could make Friday’s meetings particularly important.
North Macedonia is not asking the Commission to formally renegotiate its entire accession framework.
But its government is increasingly seeking European participation in discussions with Bulgaria, particularly over minority rights and implementation of commitments connected with the accession process.
Mickoski has said bilateral meetings held so far have produced little substantive progress.
He argues that European representatives should be in the room to hear both sides directly.
Whether the Commission is prepared to assume such a role remains unclear.
Von der Leyen’s visit may therefore provide an indication of whether Brussels sees additional mediation as useful or considers the existing EU framework sufficient.
Another problem: the reported four-country roadmap
The visit has acquired additional significance because of reports that the European Commission is preparing more detailed accession roadmaps for four candidate countries: Montenegro, Albania, Ukraine and Moldova.
The reported plans would establish sequences of reforms and indicative timelines for completing important stages of accession negotiations.
North Macedonia is not among the four countries named in those reports.
Mickoski disputed suggestions that this meant his country was being left without a roadmap.
“My information says that this is not the case,” he said.
He argued that excluding North Macedonia would be difficult to reconcile with a merit-based accession process because his government had implemented much of its Reform Agenda under the EU Growth Plan.
“If accession to the EU is a process in which countries are assessed on merit, this is illogical to me,” Mickoski said.
The reported roadmaps have not, however, been presented as guaranteed membership dates.
Nor has the Commission formally announced that North Macedonia is being removed from the enlargement process.
The distinction will be important during von der Leyen’s visit.
Albania pulls ahead
The political sensitivity is amplified by Albania’s rapid progress.
North Macedonia and Albania formally launched accession negotiations together in July 2022 after their European paths had been linked for years.
They have since separated.
Albania has moved through the negotiating clusters and is now among the countries discussed as frontrunners in the enlargement process.
North Macedonia remains unable to move beyond its current stage because the constitutional changes have not been adopted.
For Skopje, that divergence has transformed what was once a largely bilateral disagreement with Bulgaria into a broader question about the cost of continued delay.
For Brussels, however, enlargement remains formally based on each candidate’s individual progress and fulfilment of agreed conditions.
That difference in interpretation is likely to hang over Friday’s talks.
Mickoski acknowledges inherited commitments
Mickoski has also acknowledged that the current conditions cannot simply be treated as if they did not exist.
In a recent television interview, he said previous North Macedonian governments had accepted and signed agreements containing commitments the current government now had to confront.
He argued that responsibility should therefore not simply be placed on EU officials.
His government’s strategy, he said, was to improve North Macedonia’s position gradually while seeking a process with a predictable outcome.
That reflects a shift in emphasis.
Skopje is not formally rejecting EU integration or saying it will abandon the accession framework.
Instead, it is arguing that implementation of the next politically sensitive steps requires additional confidence that the conditions will not keep changing.
A visit that could clarify North Macedonia’s position
Von der Leyen’s Western Balkans tour is intended to underline EU support for the region’s accession and gradual integration into the bloc.
She will visit Albania, Kosovo, Montenegro and North Macedonia between Sept. 30 and Oct. 2.
Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina are not included in this leg of the tour because of upcoming elections, with the Commission saying von der Leyen intends to visit them later.
For North Macedonia, however, the visit comes with unusually specific questions.
Is Brussels prepared to become more directly involved in discussions between Skopje and Sofia?
Does the Commission believe the existing negotiating framework already provides everything required to resolve the impasse?
And where does North Macedonia stand as Albania and Montenegro increasingly emerge as the Western Balkan frontrunners?
Von der Leyen may not resolve the Bulgarian dispute during a single visit to Skopje.
But her answers could clarify something almost as important: whether Brussels and North Macedonia still share the same understanding of how the country can restart its stalled journey towards EU membership.