Economic Policies of FYROM Towards the EU—Are They Efficient?

Abstract

This paper makes the claim that, instead of economic policymaking based on economic cycles, the current and previous Governments of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) have made policymaking based on political cycles to suit the needs of individual elites while not focusing on the priority of eventual EU integration, leading to a decade long failure of creating priorities for eventual EU accession. The correlation of economic policy based on political consequences is presently threatening FYROM’s attempt to create institutional reforms needed to transform its economy into an efficient market economy. This “populistic” approach of the national political elites gives Brussels additional reasons to offer FYROM the cold shoulder, since national EU harmonization in economic issues have been frozen. Through a comparative and benchmark analysis, the paper will examine the present economic situation in FYROM and what is needed to intensify the process of economic policy harmonization to EU standards. It finds that the lack of sufficient economic policy outcomes from Skopje may lead the EU to regard this as a retreat from its obligations. The current economic national strategy of reforms by moving one step forward and two steps back will leave FYROM out of the EU enlargement agenda.