The EU Strategy on Western Balkans enlargement caused debate and even disagreement among various political actors. In May 1999, after the Kosovo Conflict, the EU launched the Stabilisation and Association Process providing the Western Balkans with the opportunity for potential candidacy for EU membership. At the Thessaloniki summit in 2003, the European Council declared that the future of the Balkans would be within the European Union. However, since the 2004 and 2007 EU enlargements towards Central and Eastern Europe, the EU's enlargement policy has lost its priority to external policy concerns and strategies.
The Western Balkan countries, including Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Crna Gora (Montenegro) , Kosovo, North Macedonia, and Serbia, are confronted with a different and uncertain enlargement context without a clear accession timeframe, contrary to the Central and Eastern countries. In the latest Enlargement Strategy entitled "A Credible Enlargement Perspective for and enhanced EU engagement with the Western Balkans", the European Commission has acknowledged the fact that the candidate countries are still far from membership. The Republic of North Macedonia, the main subject of this paper, was approved as a candidate country in 2005, and the European Council finally agreed to start accession negotiations with this Republic and Albania in March 2020, with a pending condition that the negotiations will be suspended if the reforms do not proceed.
The central research question of this paper is, given these circumstances, how effective is the transformative power of "Europeanisation" in transferring EU rules and norms to the legal and political systems of the Republic of North Macedonia. This paper is organized into three chapters. Following the introductory chapter, chapter II presents
the EU policies and strategies for the Western Balkans. Chapter III discusses the priority reforms and specific measures in the Republic of North Macedonia, especially in the field of rule of law and regional cooperation policies.

本稿は、JSPS科研費基盤研究(C)課題番号(18K11782）による研究活動の一部である。