North Macedonia votes in local elections overshadowed by EU accession deadlock

North Macedonia goes to the polls on Sunday for local elections that have become a referendum on the country's stalled European Union accession. The ruling VMRO-DPMNE party enters the vote with a clear lead in national polling, yet the campaign has barely touched on the potholes, waste collection and urban planning that normally dominate municipal contests. Instead, the debate has circled the same impasse that has defined North Macedonian politics for nearly two decades: the Bulgarian veto that has kept the country frozen at the starting line of EU membership talks since November 2020.

A candidate country going nowhere

North Macedonia received candidate status in December 2005. Nearly twenty years later, it has held only the first intergovernmental conference, the formal opening of accession negotiations. The blockade originates in Sofia, where successive Bulgarian governments have demanded constitutional recognition of a Bulgarian ethnic minority inside North Macedonia as a precondition for lifting their veto. The dispute centres on history, language and identity: Bulgaria regards the Macedonian language as a dialect of Bulgarian and considers the Macedonian nation a historical construct, positions that Skopje rejects as a denial of its sovereignty.

The deadlock has survived multiple governments in both capitals. The previous SDSM-led administration, under Zoran Zaev and later Dimitar Kovacevski, negotiated a French-brokered framework in 2022 that required North Macedonia to amend its constitution to include Bulgarians among the state's recognised communities. That proposal failed to secure the two-thirds parliamentary majority needed for constitutional change. The current VMRO-DPMNE government, elected in May 2024 on a platform of defending national dignity, has refused to revive it.

The constitutional trap

Venko Filipce, leader of the opposition SDSM, opened the campaign by proposing a parliamentary resolution to define state positions on the EU path and urging the government to meet its obligations under the negotiation framework by 10 February 2026. He also declared he would vote to include the Bulgarian minority in the constitution, a step analysts believe would prompt Sofia to lift its veto. "If we achieve national consensus and work intensely on reforms, no one and nothing will be able to stop us on the way to the EU," Filipce said.

Prime Minister Hristijan Mickoski rejected the proposal outright, arguing it fails to protect Macedonian national interests. At pre-election rallies he accused the opposition of yielding to Bulgaria's demands. "This government has no intention to lose dignity and honor anymore," he said ahead of a meeting with Ursula von der Leyen in Skopje days before the vote. The Commission president was unambiguous in response: "The next and only step before opening negotiations is clear, you need to make the agreed constitutional change," she wrote on X after their meeting.

Local problems, national campaign

The disconnect between the campaign and the ballot paper is starkest in Skopje. The capital, home to roughly 520,000 people, still has no wastewater treatment plant and no public transport alternative to buses. The next mayor must adopt a long-delayed General Urban Plan for 2022, 2032 and oversee preparations for Skopje's designation as European Capital of Culture in 2028. Yet these issues have been marginalised by the national debate over identity and the EU.

"Despite being local elections, the campaign has been driven by national questions, identity, minority rights and what it takes to unblock EU accession," said Dimitar Nikolovski, executive director of the Eurothink, Center for European Strategies. He described Sunday's vote as a "stress test" for the government's mandate, with outcomes in Albanian-majority municipalities watched closely for signs of coalition shifts.

The Albanian political dynamic

Albanians comprise around a quarter of North Macedonia's 1.8 million people. Albanian is the country's second official language and a guaranteed share of public sector jobs is allocated to the community. Politics in the Albanian community does not exist in isolation: developments in Tirana reverberate across the border. Albania opened EU accession talks last year and has already advanced five of six negotiating clusters, a contrast that has strengthened the opposition National Alliance for Integration (BDI) led by Ali Ahmeti.

BDI leads the ruling Albanian coalition VLEN by 9.9% to 7.5% in the October poll conducted by the Institute for Political Research for public broadcaster MRTV. Ahmeti has criticised the Macedonian government's frozen EU talks and its ties with Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic. "Next spring we must go to early [national] elections, which will be held in the spirit of legitimacy and national pride," he said. Nikolovski noted that a shift of BDI into a negotiating position in government could alter the parliamentary arithmetic on constitutional reform.

Polling and polarisation

The same survey put VMRO-DPMNE on 26.7% support nationally, far ahead of SDSM on 11.1%. The left-wing Levica party, which advocates closer ties with Russia and China, registered 5.5%. Independent candidates drew 4.3% and the junior government coalition partner ZNAM 3.8%. Yet the electorate is evenly split on the country's direction: 28.3% believe North Macedonia is moving in the wrong direction, while 27% say it is on the right path. The narrow gap suggests the VMRO-DPMNE lead reflects opposition fragmentation as much as enthusiasm for the government.

Turnout will matter. Local elections in North Macedonia typically draw lower participation than national votes, and the State Election Commission has registered 577 candidate lists for local councils. Only 32 of the 309 mayoral candidates across 81 municipalities are women. Mayoral runoffs are scheduled for 2 November where no candidate secures a first-round majority.

The EU's diminishing leverage

Von der Leyen's visit was intended to signal Brussels' continued engagement, but it also highlighted the EU's limited leverage. The negotiation framework agreed in 2022 ties constitutional change to the opening of the first negotiating cluster, fundamentals, but the framework itself cannot be activated until Bulgaria lifts its veto. The result is a circular dependency: Sofia demands the constitutional amendment before allowing the process to start, while Skopje insists on credible guarantees from the EU before amending the constitution.

"Unless there's a political compromise that lowers the temperature and provides credible guarantees from the EU in line with our government's expectations, I would expect continued gridlock rather than a quick breakthrough," Nikolovski said. He added that there are signals the government may propose another solution before the end of the year, though what form that might take remains unclear.

No Russian hand visible

One notable absence in this campaign is the foreign interference seen in Moldova's recent elections and referendum. Nikolovski said he detected no signs of Russian-style operations. "I feel there has not been such high interest in North Macedonia from Russia," he said. The Levica party's pro-Russia orientation has not translated into significant polling gains, suggesting the geopolitical cleavage that dominates politics further east has not taken root here.

For now, the voters of Skopje, Bitola, Tetovo and 78 other municipalities will decide who collects their rubbish and fixes their streets. The question of whether their country ever reaches the negotiating table in Brussels remains, as it has for nineteen years, unanswered.