The agreement also did not impose an international mission or create a long-lasting dependence of N. Macedonia on international officials, as has become a reality in Bosnia and Herzegovina or Kosovo. The peace agreement also became part of the domestic legal system and did not create a superstructure that suspended, replaced or otherwise superseded the domestic political structures. While in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Dayton has long become the byword for a flawed peace which ended the war but imposed a deeply flawed system which has become a straitjacket for the country and ossified the issues, parties and division of the war. In Kosovo, the post-war settlement lacked these problems, but it also failed to resolve the challenge to Kosovo sovereignty by Serbia and, as a result, made Serbs a vulnerable community instrumentalized and pressured by both countries.
Unlike that of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo, North Macedonia's sovereignty is not contested from within. The challenges to the country's name, identity, language, and history of its majority came from outside and had nothing to do with the Ohrid Framework Agreement.
When the different parties signed the agreement in 2001, Macedonia became a front-runner. It signed the first Stabilization and Association Agreement (SAA) with the EU months before the Ohrid Framework Agreement. The Ohrid Framework Agreement and the SAA are not only intertwined in their origin but also in their substance. If the OFA were to end the conflict, the SAA would provide a path for the country to consolidate itself economically and politically. Yet, a quarter-century later, North Macedonia remains nowhere close to joining the EU. Its fellow frontrunner, Croatia, joined 13 years ago. As early as 1991, the EC delayed North Macedonia even though it was equally ready for full recognition as its other pairing at the time, Slovenia. 30 years later, North Macedonia was linked to Albania in the EU logic. However, after Bulgaria blocked the country, Albania could move ahead while North Macedonia was blocked by Bulgaria, just as it had earlier been by Greece.
While not explicitly linked to the 2001 Ohrid Framework Agreement, EU accession was seen as the main tool to advance a shared, cross-ethnic, and democratic project. It failed to prevent the conflict as the country was left aside in the 1990s, and once more after 2001, when the peace agreement failed to translate into European integration. If Macedonia had been recognized in 1991 together with Slovenia, Macedonia could have become part of the 2004/7 EU enlargement process; if the 2001 relaunch had included a clear path to join the EU, it could have become a member with Croatia in 2013.
In the early 2000s, when the EU offered membership to the Western Balkans, this process was viewed as critical to secure the long-term democratic and peaceful future of the region. Yet, delivery has been flawed. As a result, the Ohrid Framework Agreement moved forward as the other critical aspect stagnated.
Second, the peace agreement ignored the critical question of democracy. In the 1990s, Macedonia failed to effectively include Albanians in the state. The coalitions that included Albanian parties were able to absorb some of the tensions and exclusion faced by the Albanian community, but the relief was superficial and lacked genuine inclusion of Albanians in the new state. However, the challenge was not just that a majority did not want to share the state with the largest minority; it was a democratic challenge. Like many countries in the region, Macedonia was a deeply flawed democracy during the 1990s. The transformation into a multiparty democracy was incomplete. This lack of democracy reflected itself particularly against Albanians where the state resorted in repression measures, but the democratic flaws were broader.
Any peace agreement is often silent on many issues that would be hard to negotiate or that might not be recognized as underlying problems. In 2001, the quality of democracy was not a topic of the negotiations or the agreement. Thus, the Albanian parties, particularly the dominant Democratic Union for Integration, became partners of the majority left-wing or right-wing parties in this flawed democracy.
In the name of the agreement or its implementation, the country became more segregated. The agreement itself did not stipulate that Macedonian and Albanian communities should be disentangled, including in schools. Yet it provided convenient excuses to reinforce community boundaries rather than to strengthen a shared sense of citizenship based on values. Such a sense of shared citizenship emerged in 2015/6 when Macedonian citizens protested the authoritarian rule of the Gruevski government. However, this civic coalition did not translate into political change. It would be unrealistic to blame this failure on the OFA, but it shows the blind spot of this and most peace agreements:
First, the agreement remained limited because the shared political project of European integration was repeatedly sabotaged by the EU and its member states. Notwithstanding the obstacles within North Macedonia itself, these blockades were overwhelmingly imposed from the outside.
Second, peace within a country requires the possibility for shared citizenship, which creates a shared community, while recognizing distinct languages and identities. The Agreement failed to include this step that moves beyond the boundaries of rights and communities, resulting in separate societies subject to similar ethnonationalist dominance.