The disintegration of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s saw a raft of fledgling nations appearing on the European landscape, all of whom have since applied for EU membership. Slovenia joined in 2004; Croatia in 2013. But Macedonia’s application remains on hold because of its bitter dispute with Greece over its constitutional name.

Within Macedonia there have been longstanding tensions between ethnic Macedonians, who are Orthodox Christians, and the minority Albanian population, who are Muslim. An Albanian insurgency in 2001 brought the country to the verge of civil warfare before the EU brokered a peace deal.

The political scene remains fragile, with the EU having recently urged the Macedonian government to desist from blocking ethnic Albanian parties from joining coalitions. President Gjorge Ivanov has refused to back a coalition of Social Democats and Albanian parties on the basis that the latter’s pledge to champion wider use of the Albanian language amounts to ‘foreign interference.’ The EU is concerned that this ethnic division within Macedonia has the capacity to spill over borders.