Bartosz Dziewiałtowski-Gintowt

The Three-Seas Initiative (TSI) opened at the meeting of heads of Central European countries in Dubrovnik in 2016, brings together twelve members of the European Union: Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, Romania and Hungary. Northern Macedonia in 2018 expressed interest in participating in these projects. The state, established in 1991 as a result of the disintegration of the Yugoslav federation, was characterized by permanent instability as a result of armed ethnic conflict with the Albanian minority in 2001, the internal crisis of 2015-2017, and the Greek-Macedonian nomenclatural dispute. The stabilization of the situation in the state allowed the Skopje authorities to make progress in integration with the Euro-Atlantic area to the extent that in February 2019 the Macedonian authorities initialed the NATO accession protocol, and in 2020 they will most likely start negotiations with the European Union. In this context, the attitude of Northern Macedonia to the initiative constructed by those EU countries, which are geographically and partly culturally relatively close to it, was discussed. The striving to achieve synergy between the processes of integration with the EU and NATO resonates in all Macedonian state documents. It seems that the potential partnership with the TSI can be correlated with the integration of Northern Macedonia into the Euro-Atlantic security area. The possibility of Northern Macedonia’s participation in TSI priority projects was determined by energy and transport factors, thanks to which „the europeanization” of the Macedonian gas and road network and independence from LNG liquefied gas supplies from Russia will be possible. This will undoubtedly benefit the internal and external security of Northern Macedonia. An unfavorable factor may be a different approach to the topic among the Macedonian elites: the ruling politicians chose the path of evolutionary partner status, and the opposition decided on a radical move to achieve full membership of Northern Macedonia as soon as possible in the Trinitarian Initiative. An indirect solution seems to be the concentration of authorities in Skopje on internal reforms in order to meet the requirements for candidate countries for membership in the European Union and start accession negotiations as soon as possible. Because the road to the TSI seems to lead through Brussels.