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<\/h4>\n<\/h4>\n#NorthMacedoniaIn2021<\/p>\n
2021 marked the 30th anniversary of the country’s independence and democratization efforts. North Macedonia struggled through several critical political events, including an overdue population census, local elections, another postponement of the EU decision to open accession negotiations and the resignation of prime minister Zoran Zaev.<\/em><\/p>\n This year in September the country completed its first population census, after almost two decades. Meanwhile, for years, the process was politicized for ethnic political narratives and policymaking was based on statistical approximations as an alternative.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The country also held its <\/span>7th local elections<\/span><\/a>, which resulted in a major defeat for the ruling Social Democrats (SDSM). Officially, this defeat prompted the resignation of Zoran Zaev as prime minister and leader of SDSM, a move that shook the government. Opposition parties with the support of ruling coalition partner BESA organised an unsuccessful no-confidence vote soon after Zaev announced his resignation. The voting process was surrounded by controversy as one of the <\/span>MPs withdrew his support for the no-confidence vote at the last minute<\/span><\/a>, prompting speculations about the reasons behind it.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Zaev was able to strike a deal with a small Albanian opposition party, Alternativa, thus securing the majority in the Parliament for a second time. In return, Alternativa gained a disproportionate number of ministerial and governmental positions. This political rollercoaster increased political uncertainty and contributed to the already <\/span>high levels of distrust in institutions.\u00a0<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n The performance of the Parliament was greatly affected by frequent disruptions due to the Covid 19 pandemic, filibustering, and local elections. On the other side, many legal procedures are on hold, while<\/span> the overuse of shortened procedures and the misuse of the \u201cEU flag\u201d i.e. fast track procedure <\/span><\/a>remained an issue in 2021. The \u201cgame of thrones\u201d around the no-confidence vote, crowned a gloomy year for the Parliament.<\/span><\/p>\n Following Zaev\u2019s withdrawal from politics, SDSM held internal \u201cdirect\u201d elections in which Dimitar Kovacevski, was convincingly elected as SDSM party leader and consequently became prime minister-designate. The new government, according to legal requirements, must be voted-in in January 2022. Meanwhile, many notable SDSM ministers announced that they will not be part of the new government, as several possible new names are being discussed in the public. While a new government is in sight, expectations are low due to internal squabbles between the Democratic Union for Integration (DUI) and Alternativa, which has led a fierce campaign against DUI the past few years.<\/span><\/p>\n The Covid 19 pandemic has had significant effects on the political, economic and social life in the country. At the beginning of the year, health authorities proposed and enacted several measures restricting movement, however <\/span>despite the worsening situation in September<\/span><\/a>, similar measures were lacking. Vaccination rates remain generally low, <\/span>as trust in conspiracy theories regarding the Covid 19 pandemic is high.<\/span><\/a> As of December 2021,<\/span> 820,463 people have been fully vaccinated or 39.39% of the population<\/span><\/a>, which further complicates the country\u2019s recovery process, both politically and economically.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The country still struggles to build its democratic institutions, which are encroached by corruption, clientelism and nepotism. Party patronage continues to dominate the appointment process for positions where legislation prescribes professionals. Negotiations for the government majority and concessions between coalition partners have exacerbated this situation. Conversely, two heads of inspectorates were dismissed due to internal party conflicts, instead of bad performance. Such weaknesses of integrity exist in other areas as well; most notably in decisions to avoid general rules and provide opportunities for special legislation. Decisions to build road infrastructure without open competition, or to award a special strategic investor status to unknown companies are examples of high risks of corruption in the decision-making process.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Meanwhile, the small governing majority affected the reform momentum and gave leverage to lower and mid-tier party brokers to seek rents from citizens and companies, so North Macedonia saw an increase in administrative corruption prompting citizens to see corruption as the <\/span>number one issue<\/span><\/a> in the society in 2021. These processes, coupled with <\/span>limited capacities<\/span><\/a> of the key anti-corruption institutions, undermined changes in other governance areas, such as, the risk guided work of inspectorates, the work of the State Audit, and the Anticorruption Commission.<\/span><\/p>\n The Public Prosecution Office remained the weakest link through indefinite prolongation on opening plausible cases. Even in some relative successes in convicting high-profile corruption cases, like the sentence of the ex-director of the secret police Mijalkov, they have been undermined by the inefficiencies in law enforcement and the weak performance of the judiciary to initiate high profile cases on more recent infringements.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n In terms of the EU integration process of North Macedonia, 2021 ended as it started – finding a way to overcome ambiguous requirements by Bulgaria to lift the veto on the text of the draft Negotiation framework. Neither the Portuguese (January-June 2021) nor the Slovenian presidency (July-December) managed to bridge the differences. The consecutive Bulgarian parliamentary elections further complicated the situation as there was no specific address in Sofia to negotiate a possible solution. This changed in December, as the newly elected Bulgarian prime minister proposed a new \u201csix month\u201d process that should complement the negotiations with additional, pragmatic bilateral aspects (economy, infrastructure etc.) aside historical disputes.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Secondly, the new Methodology promoted by the European Commission and pushed by France did not bring any new hope for the accession process of North Macedonia (or Albania for that matter). The reason it was brought to the forefront – to make the enlargement process more credible and certain – was not achieved. This resulted in increased doubts about the real intentions behind the introduction of the New Methodology and the growing uncertainty for France\u2019s genuine commitment to welcome North Macedonia and Albania in the EU. The decline of EU credibility in the country is reflected in the annual analyses of the public opinion and perception of the EU. <\/span>It is noticeable that compared with the previous years the EU leverage and support among the citizens has decreased<\/span>.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n From the side of our Macedonian EU reform agenda, the government did not fulfil many of its reform commitments in 2021. In March, the Government introduced the Agenda <\/span>\u201cEurope at Home<\/span><\/a>\u201d in order to stimulate local ownership of the democratization and reform processes aligned with European values and standards. However, emphasis was put on resolving the dispute with Bulgaria, which took focus from domestic reforms, thus the \u201cEurope at Home\u201d agenda remained largely on paper.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n EU stalemate, pandemic, and absence of internal good governance undermines the democratic system in which we have invested significant time and resources and puts the resilience of the democratic institutions under significant pressure.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n While a new government is imminent, the effects of this change in political leadership will cause political instability and unpredictable outcomes. The next Prime Minister will face challenges to establish his authority among the coalition partners which could further undermine the reform efforts.<\/span><\/p>\n The opposition will continue to contest the SDSM lead government, calling for early parliamentary elections. Considering the heterogeneous composition of the new government and certain antagonizing interests of incumbent partners, early elections should not be disregarded.\u00a0 Political animosity is not expected to severely disrupt the work of the Parliament, however, it is expected that parties will use available mechanisms such as fast track procedures and filibustering to obstruct or impose legislation.<\/span><\/p>\n The coalition making predicament of the junior Albanian bloc will become more apparent in 2022. Parties in opposition lose votes because of their support to VMRO-DPMNE and those in the majority also have declining support because of their coalition with DUI. Coupled with heated rhetoric by actors in the Macedonian bloc, we see this facilitating more ethnocentric positions by the majority of parties and zero-sum games in the decision-making process. This will further weaken progressives in both government and opposition.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The increasing prices of commodities and resources will downgrade the already challenging living standard. The ongoing energy crisis coupled with the economic consequences from the Covid-19 pandemic will put further pressure on the new government despite the <\/span>Central Bank projections<\/span><\/a> of solid economic growth of 3,9% in 2022.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n If the issues with Bulgaria are not resolved in the 6-months period proposed by the new government in Sofia, further decline in EU leverage is to be expected as well as possible decoupling from Albania. Either way, prospects for the country’s progress on the democratization agenda will be more difficult than ever before.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In this short text, the Institute for Democracy gives an overview of the main events that shaped politics in North Macedonia in 2021 and a glimpse of what to expect in 2022. #NorthMacedoniaIn2021 2021 marked the 30th anniversary of the country’s independence and democratization efforts. North Macedonia struggled through several critical political events, including an […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":13564,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[250,3,1],"tags":[342,689,827,494],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/idscs.org.mk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13559"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/idscs.org.mk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/idscs.org.mk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/idscs.org.mk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/idscs.org.mk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13559"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/idscs.org.mk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13559\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27128,"href":"https:\/\/idscs.org.mk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13559\/revisions\/27128"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/idscs.org.mk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13564"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/idscs.org.mk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13559"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/idscs.org.mk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13559"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/idscs.org.mk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13559"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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