North Macedonia’s national conservative opposition platform, Your Macedonia, celebrates a double landslide victory after Wednesday’s (May 8th) parliamentary elections, coinciding with the second round of voting for the country’s next president. Despite the ruling social democrats framing their challengers as the biggest threat to EU integration throughout the campaign, the conservatives managed to secure three times more votes in the end—signaling that the Balkan country had enough of leftist leadership and was ready to plot a different course toward the future.
At nearly all the ballots counted, the conservative Your Macedonia alliance—led by the center-right, sovereigntist VMRO-DPMNE party—secured 44.4% of the votes which translates to 58 seats in the 120-seat parliament. The incumbent social democratic party (SDSM) and its liberal coalition partners under the explicitly pro-EU electoral platform “For a European Future,” received only 15.8%, translating to a mere 18 seats.
Your Macedonia leader Hristijan Mickoski, very likely the country’s next prime minister, called the results a “historic win for the people,” and one that will finally put an end to the corruption and humiliation suffered under the previous government.
The third and fourth places went to rival parties both representing ethnic Albanians who make up about a quarter of the country’s population, gaining 14% and 11%. In the fifth and sixth place, we find an anti-western, Euroskeptic far-left party (6.9%) and the socialists’ progressive, Europhile, left-wing populist splinter group (5.7%).
The conservatives not only shined in the parliamentary race but in the parallel presidential run-off too, as we predicted based on the results of the first round that took place on April 24th. The Your Macedonia candidate—university professor Gordana Siljanovska-Davkova—easily defeated the incumbent president, the social democrat Stevo Pendarovski by securing 69% of the vote, becoming the first woman to claim the office of the head of state in the country’s history.
Electoral turnout was the highest in recent times, signaling a large demand for political change among Macedonians. The campaign was dominated by the country’s future EU membership prospects, as the incumbent coalition tried to frame itself as the only force able to deliver the accession and claimed that the conservative Your Macedonia would only hinder the process by insisting on national interests.
Based on the results, the socialists’ fear-mongering no longer works. It’s true that the main conservative party, VMRO-DPMNE, is frequently engaged in soft-Euroskeptic rhetoric and sovereigntist policies, but it never campaigned against EU membership. Instead, the conservatives’ goal is that, as an EU member, North Macedonia remains “proud and dignified, not humiliated, disfigured, and disgraced.” Besides, VMRO-DPMNE is an associate member of the center-right European People’s Party (EPP).
One of the frequently cited issues is Skopje’s diplomatic dispute with Sofia, as the latter demands a constitutional change to protect ethnic Bulgarians in North Macedonia—barely 0.2% of the population—before it approves the country’s EU membership. The outgoing SDSM government was ready to give in, but the sovereigntists refuse to entertain a legislative precedent that might embolden the much larger and partly separatist Albanian community.
It’s also clear that Wednesday’s result is not exactly what the Brussels establishment had been hoping for. Leaders of the EU institutions usually pay attention to elections in candidate countries and are among the first to congratulate the winners, but not in this case. Neither Commission President Ursula von der Leyen nor Parliament President Roberta Metsola took the time to publicly congratulate Your Macedonia as of Thursday afternoon, which is quite telling in itself.
In contrast, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán called the results a “well-deserved and historic victory” on Wednesday night, promising to “give momentum” to North Macedonia’s EU accession process. The country was granted candidate status in 2005, nearly two decades ago, so it’s high time Brussels takes it seriously regardless of who the democratically elected government is.
Budapest has long been saying that speeding up the accession of all West Balkan candidate countries will be one of the main priorities of the coming Hungarian EU presidency starting in July—partly because of the region’s high geostrategic significance in the fight against illegal migration, and also because it would mean more conservative and sovereigntist allies in Brussels.
Wednesday’s landslide election results still leave Your Macedonia two seats short of forming a government on its own. The Albanian parties have historically been kingmakers in North Macedonia, although this time, there’s not much of a choice left. The conservatives said they don’t want the largest ethnic block, the more socialist-aligned Albanian Democratic Union as their coalition, and instead opted for the united Albanian opposition platform, the VLEN coalition, whose 13 seats would be more than enough for a stable government.
