Regional Watch

Coalition Fractures Risk Snap Elections in North Macedonia

Dr. Liridona Veliu Ashiku - 20 Jun 2025

North Macedonia's Prime Minister-elected and VMRO-DPMNE's party leader Hristijan Mickoski speaks to lawmakers during a session in the parliament building in Skopje, on June 23, 2024. (Photo by ROBERT ATANASOVSKI/AFP via Getty Images)

Dr. Liridona Veliu Ashiku

Program Manager, Keough-Naughton Institute for Irish Studies, University of Notre Dame

The Big Picture: North Macedonia’s VLEN coalition is splintering as Albanian parties realign, a rupture that imperils Prime Minister Mickoski’s reform platform, recasts the ethnic electoral map, and risks derailing Skopje’s fragile EU-accession momentum just months before critical municipal polls.

North Macedonia’s governing coalition is fraying six months before scheduled October municipal elections and only a year since its creation. The fractures began to show in May when Health Minister Arben Taravari pulled his Alliance for Albanians (ASH) out of the VLEN coalition comprising ASH, BESA, Alternativa, Democratic Movement, and Vetëvendosje-MK. He then announced separate councilor lists, opening the door to a pact with the opposition Democratic Union for Integration (DUI), historically the leading Albanian bloc in the country.

The move triggered a public war of words among ethnic Albanian leaders, fresh calls from the DUI for snap parliamentary elections, and calls for a Cabinet reshuffle. What seemed to have begun as an intra-coalition dispute now threatens to reshape the electoral map, complicate Skopje’s EU agenda, and unseat a government Prime Minister Hristijan Mickoski had pledged would deliver long-delayed reforms—including comprehensive judicial overhauls and a more cautious, reciprocal approach to constitutional amendments recognizing the country’s Bulgarian minority, a key EU accession condition.

Key Insight: Taravari’s exit will empower the DUI and fracture the Albanian vote. The DUI, VLEN, and ASH will vie in 17 municipalities thus diluting Albanian leverage in national politics.

VLEN’s consolidation of the country’s four major Albanian parties offered a credible alternative to DUI’s two-decade dominance of the ethnic Albanian vote in North Macedonia. Taravari’s party’s exit means DUI, VLEN, and ASH will compete for votes across at least 17 municipalities with significant Albanian populations. That split will likely push several mayoral races into runoffs and reduce Albanian political leverage at the national level.

Key Insight: ASH’s defection is undercutting EU-related reform consensus and letting Mickoski brandish snap elections as leverage over wavering partners.

DUI’s public challenge, “ejani në zgjedhje!” (“come to elections!”), was quickly matched by VLEN’s “we accept” statement, but dissolving parliament requires 80 votes. VMRO-DPMNE (58) plus the slimmed-down VLEN (8) would still need smaller parties to pull the trigger. More importantly, the risk is not just about seat counts: ASH’s departure from VLEN has fractured coalition unity, making it harder to build the political consensus needed for sensitive reforms—especially constitutional amendments tied to EU accession, which also require 80 votes. For Mickoski, the threat of early elections is a strategic tool to pressure remaining coalition partners into falling in line and avoiding further gridlock on key votes like the budget and EU legislation.

Key Insight: Policy bandwidth is draining from reforms into coalition brinkmanship, eroding the credibility Skopje needs in the next EU and NATO scorecards.

The dispute has already stalled the “balancer” mechanism, a power-sharing formula meant to ensure equitable Albanian representation in government, and Taravari has since cited that paralysis as proof the coalition underserves Albanian voters. At the same time, constitutional amendments demanded by Sofia, which has used its veto power to block North Macedonia’s EU accession, remain on ice, with Bulgaria and EU actors repeatedly reminding Skopje the change is a condition for accession talks. Brussels is now preparing its next enlargement package while MEPs have already postponed a vote on the 2025 North Macedonia progress report because of the deadlock.

Key Insight: Ousting Taravari restores DUI’s Albanian monopoly, while keeping him inflames VMRO-DPMNE nationalism and alienates VLEN—either way, reforms are sacrificed to ethnic score-keeping.

Firing Taravari would placate VLEN and signal a hard line against any crossover with DUI, but it would also eject four ASH MPs and let DUI cast itself as the sole guardian of Albanian interests—renewing the very dominance over the Albanian electorate VLEN was meant to break. Retaining Taravari secures the parliamentary majority but would lead to complaints from VLEN about being sidelined in favor of disloyal parties, undermining trust in the reform agenda. It also threatens to inflame the VMRO-DPMNE’s nationalist flank, which already bristles at “concessions” to Albanian parties. Either path shifts the debate from reforms to raw ethnic scorekeeping and undercuts Mickoski’s narrative of a stable, policy-driven government.

The Bottom Line: Snap-election talk is still a bargaining chip, but a fall collapse is real enough that Brussels and Washington must ready contingency plans now—or risk reliving past crises in North Macedonia.

With ASH’s withdrawal from the VLEN coalition, talk of snap elections is growing louder. However, they remain more of a threat used to pressure coalition partners rather than a foregone conclusion signaling an immediate vote. Still, the possibility of a government collapse and both general and municipal elections in October is growing. Brussels and Washington should not take North Macedonia’s relative calm for granted. With regional attention pulled toward more urgent issues, such as the ongoing secession crisis in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the lessons of past neglect, when delayed responses to Macedonian crises triggered wider instability, should prompt early contingency planning, especially on electoral administration and minority-rights safeguards.