North Macedonia

Northern Macedonia will become a NATO member soon, all NATO countries have completed the process of ratifying its membership protocol. This was announced by NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, presenting his annual report on the state of NATO in 2019.

EU ambassadors are to make a decision on Thursday on a draft document agreeing the start of accession talks for Albania and North Macedonia.

If they approve the draft, the decision is expected to be confirmed later this month by EU foreign ministers and prime ministers, who are set to convene, probably via video conferences, on March 24 and 26 respectively.

Macedonian President Stevo Pendarovski has declared a state of emergency throughout Northern Macedonia, BGNES reported.

In a statement to the nation, Pendarovski said this was necessary to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. Prime Minister Oliver Spasovski called on parliament to declare a state of emergency because of the spread of COVID-19 at noon today.

Turkey on March 17 congratulated North Macedonia on its accession to NATO.

"#NorthMacedonia's accession to @NATO has been ratified by all Allies. Congratulations my friend @Dmitrov_Nikola, welcome to the Alliance!," Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu said on Twitter.

Small businesses first to suffer

"Today you are only my third customer. I only have made about 300 Denars [five euros]," a taxi driver wearing a face mask and protective gloves, as prescribed by the authorities, told BIRN.

North Macedonia on Tuesday cleared the final hurdle to becoming the 30th member of the NATO military alliance after the Spanish Senate ratified its accession.

Spain's office at NATO said that 259 of the 264 senators endorsed the move. The bill was immediately signed by King Felipe and will be submitted to the US State Department for official confirmation within the next 72 hours.

The heads of North Macedonia's main political parties met at the presidential palace in Skopje on Tuesday and agreed to postpone the early elections, which were originally slated for April 12.

The modalities for the postponement and a new election date have yet to be determined, however.

An opinion poll published on Monday by the International Republican Institute, IRI, a US-based democracy development organisation, suggested that North Macedonia's main ruling Social Democrats enjoy a very slight popularity advantage over their bitter rivals, the right-wing opposition VMRO DPNNE party.

Human rights activists in North Macedonia say they are encouraged by the decision of the alliance led by the ruling Social Democrats to make the number of women and men MP candidates on their election lists equal.

The move, announced this week, is the first time that one of the main political parties or alliances in the country has opted for completely equal gender representation.

Leaders of the main parties in North Macedonia agreed that elections would go ahead as planned on April 12 after meeting on Thursday in the office of the caretaker Prime Minister, Oliver Spasovski.