The Flawed Agreement : The 2022 French Proposal in the Bulgaria–North Macedonia EU Accession Dispute

This thesis researches the 2022 ‘French Proposal', Council Presidency document on the successful mediation between North Macedonia and Bulgaria to lift the Bulgarian veto on EU negotiations. The framework of Liberal Intergovernmentalism (LI) is used, supported by a qualitative document analysis on four official documents: The ‘French Proposal’, the Council Conclusions adopting the proposal, the 2017 Treaty of Friendship between North Macedonia and Bulgaria and the 2022 Bilateral Protocol that adds to the 2017 treaty. Together with twenty-three academic sources, the analysis’ structure aligns with the three pillars of LI theory: state preferences, bargaining and institutional choice. The findings have shown that Bulgaria seeks symbolic, nationalist and identity-based demands from North Macedonia, including a constitutional amendment that recognises a Bulgarian minority, textbook and education changes and protection against hate speech. The North Macedonian preferences are focused on unlocking their EU accession process, but has so far not been able to implement the demands due to domestic resistance. France helped mediate in 2022 soon after the war in Ukraine began, seeking EU credibility and national prestige. The bargaining outcome was one-sided due to Bulgaria's low-cost veto leverage, allowing it to include bilateral identity demands into EU conditionality, which has not happened before in EU enlargement. The institutional design strengthened their leverage, as the institutions created have minimal enforcement capabilities and the demands themselves remain vaguely worded, open to Bulgarian interpretation. It is concluded that the 2022 French Proposal as a mediation and agreement was unrealistic to implement, had elements not seen before in EU enlargement, damaging to EU credibility by legitimising nationalist demands and structurally flawed from the outset.