essential element for democracy and rule of law assessment in the country (Brsakoska Bazerkoska, 2016). According to Sahlin(Sahlin, 2007), the EU actions in Macedonia were a very special case of what can be seen as comparatively successful conflict prevention and crisis management. This was a huge investment for the EU. Moreover, the European action in Macedonia was closely connected to protecting the Ohrid Framework Agreement as a symbol for the successful conflict management carried out by the EU. In 2004, the society was once again on the brink of another crisis as a ref­erendum was called to put a stop to the process of redistributing the powers from central government to the newly established local authorities, as part of the Ohrid Framework Agreement. The Commission Delegation in Skop­je was very active in supporting this process and, using its conditionality policy and the‘carrot’ of the candidate status, the EU managed to pressure the government to proceed with what was seen as a painful process of de­centralization. 54 Although the granting of candidate status to the Republic of Macedonia in 2005 was seen as recognition of important progress, par­ticularly regarding the inter-ethnic situation, the absence of membership negotiations until this day reflects some serious weaknesses(Brsakoska Bazerkoska, 2016). An additional condition to begin the negotiations was imposed on the Republic of Macedonia: a resolution of the name issue with neighbouring Greece. Once again, the EU Member States’ inability to reach a consensus on the name issue between the Republic of Macedonia and Greece prolonged the integration process of this small country in the Balkans. The lack of European perspective has opened the way for authori­tarianism in Macedonia and contributed towards building the phenomenon of a captured state. 55 Security Implications from the NATO Bucharest Summit in 2008 Macedonian leadership had a strong belief that the country should be se­cured within a regional security framework, and as a result of that, in the last 20 years Macedonia had been working hard to become a part of NATO. The Republic of Macedonia was part of the NATO Partnership for Peace program since November 1995. In April 1999, at the NATO Washington 54 The proposed law was designed partly to give communes with an Albanian majority the right of self-governance. 55 This is a description of the country which is given in the Progress Report by the European Commission. It is supposed to designate a state where there is a long-lasting bifurcation of state and the party. Chapter 3 – Case Study: The Republic Of North Macedonia 127