EU leaders meeting in the European Council on 17–18 October 2019 did not come to agreement on opening accession negotiations with North Macedonia and Albania. They agreed in their conclusions that the European Council will come back to the issue of enlargement before the EU-Western Balkans summit in Zagreb in May 2020.

Nearly all member states wanted to open negotiations, President Tusk said after the summit, but such a decision requites unanimity, and there was none.

"Let me be very clear: North Macedonia and Albania are not to blame for this. And the Commission reports are also clear that both these countries did what they were asked to do. And the adoption of the Prespa Agreement was a truly extraordinary achievement. So both countries have the right to start EU negotiations as of today. They are ready. Unfortunately, a few member states are not ready yet. This is why we didn't manage to reach a positive decision. Personally, I think it was a mistake, but I will not comment on it further.Today I would like to send a message to our Macedonian and Albanian friends: please do not give up. I fully understand your frustration, because you did your share and we haven't. The EU is a complex political entity, and it is true that sometimes it takes too long to decide. But I have absolutely no doubt that one day you will become full members of the European Union."

North Macedonia applied for membership in 2004, thirteen years after its independence from Yugoslavia. It became a candidate for accession in 2005. The major obstacle for the accession process was its name dispute with Greece. The dispute was solved by the Prespa agreement of June 2018, under which the country's constitutional name, then Republic of Macedonia, changed to Republic of North Macedonia. As part of the agreement, Greece withdrew its veto blocking Macedonian accession.

Albania applied for membership in 2009 and became an official candidate for accession only in 2019. 

In the summer of 2018, the EU held out the prospect of the North Macedonia and Albania being invited to start accession negotiations in June 2019 and the European Commission announced in May that both countries had made the necessary progress on democratic standards and the rule of law and recommended starting the membership talks.

However, in June of this year the Council did not reach agreement on inviting the two countries to begin accession talks and decided to come back to the issue and make a clear decision in October 2019 at the latest.

On 3 October 2019 the presidents of the three institutions (the Council, the Parliament and the Commission) – Donald Tusk, David Sassoli, Jean-Claude Juncker, and Commission President-elect von der Leyen – issued a joint letter in which they stressed that both North Macedonia and Albania fulfilled the necessary requirements and that the European Union is now a strategic choice. "Whether the EU decides now to open accession talks with North Macedonia and Albania is a test of the Union’s ability to deliver on its promises and look to the future", they wrote.

"We believe that now is the time to open accession talks with both countries," the letter concluded.

The question of whether to open talks with North Macedonia and Albania was on the agenda on the General Affairs Council on 15 October, which referred it to the meeting of EU leaders at the summit on 17–18 October.