Yes. The European Council has decided on 17 December 2005 to grant the status of candidate country to the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. That decision was based on the analysis made by the Commission in its Opinion on the application for membership adopted on 9 November 2005. The European Council in particular took into account the substantial progress made by the country in completing the legislative framework related to the Ohrid Framework Agreement, as well as its track record in implementing the Stabilisation and Association Agreement (including its trade-related provisions) since 2001.

As a candidate country, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia is eligible to all “pre-accession funds” like all other candidates (Turkey and Croatia). However, a decision to grant additional funds is not automatic, since it will depend on the absorption capacity of the national authorities and their ability to implement EU financial assistance within a decentralised implementation system. This system is not yet in place, but the Commission is working together with the national authorities to assist the relevant Ministries to set up all necessary institutions and financial control requirements. Previous experiences have demonstrated that this is a rather long and complex exercise.

A “candidate country” is not necessarily a “negotiating country”. Croatia and Turkey were candidate countries for a period of time before the Council decided they were ready and prepared to open accession negotiations.
Although the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia is well on its way to meet the political criteria set by the Copenhagen European Council of 1993, it needs to do more in order to be able to start accession negotiations. As concluded by the European Council of December 2005, further steps will be considered by the EU in the light of compliance by the country with the EU membership criteria, and in particular of the progress achieved to respond to the issues raised in the European Partnership.

Future decisions will also take into account the outcome of the ongoing debate on the enlargement strategy and the integration capacity of the Union.

It is really premature to speculate when the country will join the EU since accession negotiations have not yet been opened by the European Council. The former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia will enter into the EU as soon as it is ready, i.e. when it has successfully fulfilled the established criteria (the membership criteria defined by the European Council in Copenhagen in June 1993) and completed the accession negotiations. It is important that the country keeps working on the reforms needed since the pace of reforms will determine the pace of the future negotiations. This is a complex process, and we don’t know yet how long it will take. We should not, however, forget how long it took the ten Member States from Central and Eastern Europe to become ready.