(Un)successful european union reforms in western balkans: the case of north macedonia

This bachelor thesis - The (Un)successful European Union Reforms in Western Balkans: The Case of North Macedonia - examines the contradiction between the European Union’s institutional and financial support to Western Balkans and the region’s continuous failure to implement the required reforms. The aim of this paper is to find out why North Macedonia, an outlier case in the region, is successfully implementing EU reforms. In the first section, the dominant academic theory of Europeanisation is criticized because of its flaws in answering the question why EU reforms are not properly implemented in Western Balkans. Europeanisation is widely defined as a process whereby domestic politics becomes increasingly subjected to European policy making. The problem, however, is that Europeanisation mostly focuses on how the EU is affecting the outside incentive structure of the country (i.e. through conditionality principle) instead of focusing on the domestic politics. Therefore, a more appropriate alternative institutionalist theoretical approach on the limited and open access orders is presented. Douglas North’s et al. open and limited access order theory states that there are various social orders with different institutional, political, and economic characteristics. The state’s system becomes more open when its economic and political organisations are separated from each other, non-discriminatory rules are in place and no non-state organisations have the violence capacity. Limited access order can vary from fragile to mature. In this theoretical concept, North Macedonia is situated as a mature limited access order. In the empirical analysis section, the case of North Macedonia is analysed in terms of its political, economic and corruption contexts. This analysis showcases that North Macedonia’s economic system is constantly opening up, democratisation and freedom of media are improving, and therefore, the country is becoming more mature in terms of its institutional framework. The main reason for this systemic change lies in the political scandal of 2015, which disclosed that the biggest parliament party VMRO-DPMNE, which was in power for more than 10 years, was abusing political power to capture the state. A new SDSM party that came in power in 2016 is reforming the country together with the European Commission and trying to make North Macedonia a more transparent, free, and developed country. However, the biggest problem in North Macedonia still is the high level of corruption, which is yet to be addressed. The key findings on the importance of countries’ institutional frameworks when it comes to implementing the EU reforms present the following: when a country in question is of a more mature limited access order or open access order, it becomes easier to adopt the required EU reforms. This analysis serves as a starting point for opening wider debates about the reasons why Western Balkans are not implementing required reforms despite them all trying to become the members of European Union. The research also points out the theoretical limits of conventional theories (i.e. Europeization) and instead paves a way for future studies employing limited and open access order theory to analyse the EU reforms. It remains to be seen whether this theoretical model could be valuable when applied to different international contexts as well

Evaluation study of the European Framework Programmes for Research and Innovation for a Resilient Europe: Final Report Phase 1:Evaluation study feeding into the Commission’s ex-post evaluation of Horizon 2020

This final report provides the results of the ‘Resilient Europe study’ implemented in the period between December 2021 and January 2023.The study was completed by a consortium consisting of PPMI Group, Prognos, VTT and Maastricht University. Using a wide range of qualitative and quantitative methods, the study covers Horizon 2020 activities that contribute to building a more resilient Europe in terms of addressing the following challenges: Societal Challenge 1; Societal Challenge 6; Societal Challenge 7. In parallel, the study also assesses four institutional partnerships, namely the AAL2, EDCTP2, IMI2 and EIT Health