On paper, North Macedonia is in the middle of the pack. In practice, it is stuck at the door.
EPIC’s Integration Readiness Index, published in June 2026 as a study paper with the Friedrich Naumann Foundation, scores ten candidate countries from 0 to 10 for each year from 2021 to 2025. The authors, Antonios Nestoras, Emil Kirjas and Bernada Cunj, draw only on European Commission progress reports and measure each country against Croatia in 2011, the last state to finish accession.
North Macedonia scored 5.5 for 2025. That equals Serbia. It sits behind Montenegro (6.8), Albania (6.7), Moldova (5.87) and Ukraine (5.85). It is well ahead of Kosovo (3.61), Georgia (3.26), Bosnia and Herzegovina (2.91) and Türkiye (2.81).
By that measure Skopje is ahead of four of the nine other candidates. Yet it is the only one of the six highest scorers with no accession talks under way.
Jan Nowinowski of the OSW Centre for Eastern Studies laid out the deadlock in his March 2026 commentary, “Waiting for Godot: Prospects for resolving the Bulgaria–North Macedonia dispute.” North Macedonia has been a candidate since 2005. No negotiating cluster has opened. Bulgaria keeps its veto and demands that Skopje amend its constitution to recognise Bulgarians as a national minority in the preamble.
Skopje refuses, fearing the change would only invite more demands. It wants an EU guarantee that this would be the last condition before talks open, and Brussels has not given one. Nowinowski’s conclusion is blunt: resolving the dispute bilaterally, without outside mediation, looks highly unlikely.
The politics have hardened. VMRO-DPMNE won the 2024 elections on a platform against further concessions, and in May 2025 Prime Minister Hristijan Mickoski said his country could not keep changing its constitution without results from Sofia. European Council President António Costa replied that there was no “Plan B” beyond the 2022 framework. In July, Balkan Insight reported that the EU was again pressing Skopje to alter its constitution. Bulgaria, meanwhile, held its eighth parliamentary election in five years in April.
Compare Albania. It scores 6.7 and opened all six negotiating clusters after being separated from Skopje’s file in 2024. The gap between the two countries is 1.2 points on the index, but the gap in access is total.
Nowinowski also flags public opinion. Support for EU membership in North Macedonia has slipped from 80% in 2014 to 71% in 2025.
The index measures how ready a country is, not whether the door will open. North Macedonia shows the difference. A 5.5 score built from Commission reports says Skopje is nearer the finish line than Kosovo, Georgia, Bosnia or Türkiye. A single bilateral veto says it can’t start the race. The Commission’s annual progress reports this autumn are the raw material for the index’s next reading. They can update the score. Only a deal between Skopje and Sofia can change the access.
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