This paper aims to assess the effectiveness of the mediation endeavour of the
European Union (EU) in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) since
March 2015. The analytical part of this paper rests upon the identification of EU
mediation objectives as defined in documents published before and during the
mediation, notably the 2015 Pržino Agreement. It draws on the work of Bergmann and
Niemann which operationalises mediator effectiveness along two dimensions: goalattainment
and conflict-settlement.1 The factors that have – directly or indirectly – a
bearing on the mediation process can be structured around four key clusters of
variables: conflict context, mediator leverage, mediation strategy and coherence.
The paper finds that the mediation process in the case of FYROM has been rather
effective owing to the EU's mediator strategy and its high level of coherence.
However, certain factors seem to have had a constraining impact on EU mediation
effectiveness: very low levels of internal cohesiveness amongst the conflict parties and
hence a high proclivity to spoiler problems, as well as the waning EU leverage as a
result of the lack of a firm EU membership perspective
