tion increased. In the period from 2006 to 2010, the number of Albanians employed in state institutions and public administration was continually increasing. In this context it is also important to note that before the imple­mentation of the Ohrid Framework Agreement, the representation of ethnic minorities within security forces(that is the uniformed structures of the army and police) was relatively small. In 2001, the percentage of Albani­an civil servants in police services was 2.5 per cent. However, in 2003 this percentage increased to 10.5 per cent and by 2006 rose to 16.5 per cent. Representation of the ethnic communities in the army, especially in the uni­formed and civilian structure, was significantly improved(Mitrevska, 2013). The Ohrid Framework Agreement was seen as tool that would contribute to evading the re-emergence of the conflict. Thus, conflict prevention can­not be presented as a formula that will mend the problems on the surface, essentially leaving open deep political(ethno-political mobilization, corrup­tion, crime), economic(independence, unemployment, lack of investments, illegal trade), social(poverty, low standard) and security(illegal possession and trafficking in arms, illegal trafficking in people) reasons for conflict. The intersection of events in Macedonia before and after the conflict is an obvious example of that, because the Macedonian conflict ended with a political solution and full implementation of the Ohrid Framework Agree­ment, representing political capital with special political and legal influ­ence, which opened up new horizons for a new reform policy(Ibid). International Support and the Aftermath of the 2001 Conflict The involvement of the US and the EU in the signing of the Ohrid Frame­work Agreement represented a strong commitment to Macedonia’s security and territorial integrity. Each brought key assets to the negotiations: the EU in the prospect of membership in the Union, particularly important to ethnic Macedonian elites; the US in the promise of NATO support for any agreement, especially important to the ethnic Albanians, who feared retri­bution and tended to view NATO as their ally(Chivvis, 2008). The conflict took the EU by surprise and the Swedish Presidency at the time decided to use the closer relationship with the EU as an alternative to war (Giandomenico, 2009). In the Macedonian case, the EU used the so-called European perspective as a conflict management tool. One of the reasons this conflict management tool was effective was that this approach was accepted by the Macedonian government(Brsakoska Bazerkoska, 2016). Chapter 3 – Case Study: The Republic Of North Macedonia 125