Analysis of North Macedonia’s Readiness to Implement European Legal Decisions: A Review Through the Prism of ECtHR Practice

North Macedonia has gained the status of a candidate country to the EU membership in 2005, and has been working towards meeting the Copenhagen criteria (1993) for membership, focusing on political, economic, and legal reforms, including harmonizing its laws with EU standards. In this process, North Macedonia is assisted by the European Commission, whereby the Commission evaluates on a yearly level the country’s progress in all field of enlargement. In relation to that, the European Commission in its most recent Progress reports for North Macedonia for the years 2023 and 2024, concerning Chapter 23 on Judiciary and Fundamental rights, observed that the country’s legal framework on the protection of fundamental rights is only partially aligned with the EU acquis and European standards on fundamental rights. On these grounds, the paper will focus on the alignment of Macedonian law and legal system with EU law in the part of implementation of the ECHR and the Judgments of the ECtHR, having in mind the Union’s relation to the Convention and to its fundamental principles. In this paper to gain a more complete picture in the light of immigration, we will investigate the application of European law by national courts in two cases brought against North Macedonia, El-Masri and A.A. and Others, comparing the outcomes of these two cases and the impact they have on the Macedonian judiciary from an immigration point of view.