Challenges of EU Accession for Macedonia and Ukraine: Selected View from Inside Europe and Outside Visegrad

The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia is a country with huge interest in accession to the great family of the European Union, which now counts about 500 million people. The paper aims to explain this interest and to give detailed arguments to all the expectations, by focusing on the process of accession of the country to the European Union and giving examples of other countries‘ similar efforts from wider region. This process represents the culmination of more than two decades of economic, social and political transformation of the country. The membership in the European Union, according to the theoretical knowledge and comparative experience, should bring convenience for Macedonia and its citizens, including prosperity, more intensive relations with its European neighbours and contribution to shaping the political, social and economic development of Europe. The accession process is long and difficult, partly because of the necessity to adopt many laws and regulations of the European Union for new member states, contained in the Acquis communautaire.