The prospect of joining the EU and civil service reform in the Republic of North Macedonia

Abstract

The Republic of North Macedonia, a candidate country in the EU, is continuously subject to conditionality in relation to establishing a professional and effective public administration from the EU institutions and from the civil society. This paper employs the qualitative methodology of process tracing to find out whether the EU conditionality has managed to establish a merit-based civil service. The data are gathered and analyzed for a period of ten years while analyzing the legal and institutional structure of the civil service. The findings identify the factors that hampered or prolonged the implementation of reforms and they offer insights on the conditions necessary for the civil service reforms to take place.