North Macedonia Moves to Scrap Investment Threshold in Citizenship Revamp
Updated: 10 hours ago
SKOPJE, September 15, 2026 — North Macedonia's Interior Ministry has proposed removing the €400,000 investment threshold and its ten-job requirement from the country's economic citizenship framework, replacing a defined investment product with a case-by-case assessment of national interest.
The draft amendments to the Law on Citizenship were published on the government's ENER regulatory register in June 2026. Under the proposal, each application would require opinions from competent state institutions assessing whether the candidate genuinely represents a special scientific, economic, cultural, sporting or other national interest. An investment would no longer automatically confer eligibility.
What the Draft Changes
Element | Current Framework | Proposed Framework |
Investment threshold | €400,000 direct investment | Removed |
Job creation | Ten jobs required | Removed |
Fund route | €200,000 to approved fund (since 2021) | Removed |
Assessment | Predetermined criteria | Case-by-case, institutional opinions |
Investment role | Automatic eligibility | One consideration among several |
The ministry has stressed that the reform does not abolish investment as a relevant consideration. Rather, it eliminates the possibility of what it calls "transactional" abuse — the treatment of citizenship as a purchasable commodity.
A second, less-noticed provision shortens the waiting period for former citizens to re-acquire citizenship from three years to three months. Skopje frames this as part of a strategy to draw diaspora talent back into the economy.
Brussels: Abolish, Don't Rebrand
The European Commission's position leaves little room for creative drafting. Its Eighth Report under the Visa Suspension Mechanism, published in December 2025, instructed North Macedonia to "abolish the scheme and repeal its legal basis," disclose all applications submitted under the special-economic-interest provision, and subject each to rigorous background checks.
That demand is anchored in the Court of Justice of the European Union's judgment against Malta's investor citizenship programme of 29 April 2025. Since that ruling, the Commission's 2025 Enlargement Package has treated the abolition of investor citizenship frameworks — legal basis included — as a condition of compliance with EU law for candidate countries.
Under the revised Visa Suspension Mechanism, operating an investor citizenship programme is now, in itself, grounds for suspending a third country's visa-free access to the Schengen area. That gives Brussels a lever with immediate practical consequences for Skopje.
A Program With More Legal Basis Than Reality
For all the attention it attracts, North Macedonia's economic citizenship track has produced remarkably few citizens.
Period | Grants | Refusals |
2005–2022 | 121 | 40 |
2023 | 1 | — |
2024 | 2 | — |
Local reporting, citing official data, puts naturalisations under Article 11 of the Law on Citizenship — the provision covering all merit grounds, from scientists to athletes — at more than 370 over the years. The economic subset alone has averaged roughly seven passports a year.
The government first began granting citizenship at the €400,000 level in 2016, purely on a discretionary basis, before a decree defined formal criteria. In early 2021, a €200,000 fund-contribution route emerged, complete with authorised agents, a master compliance agent for Asia, and by August that year, pre-approval letters issued through the country's embassy in Abu Dhabi.
Momentum never followed. The Commission's subsequent monitoring recorded a handful of economic citizenship applications pending without processing, and the programme drifted into dormancy.
"Not Abolishing an Active Program"
Theodora Jantol of The Passport Investor, who works across the Western Balkans, cautions against describing the reform as abolishing an active programme.
"It had not developed into an actively functioning mainstream program and had been largely dormant for some time."
In her reading, the government is removing the elements that most resemble a conventional CBI model while preserving a broader discretionary mechanism based on citizenship by merit or national interest.
Jantol sees the distinction as defensible in principle:
"I do not think citizenship by exception or citizenship by merit should disappear simply because the beneficiary happens to be an investor."
She draws the line between two propositions. Saying "invest €400,000 and create 10 jobs and you may qualify" describes a rules-based investment product with defined criteria. Concluding, after individual assessment, that a person's extraordinary contribution justifies naturalisation in the national interest is citizenship by merit.
Malta, she notes, drew the same distinction after the CJEU judgment — abandoning predetermined financial contributions while retaining a framework for exceptional merit.
Laszlo Kiss of Discus Holdings is more sceptical. He points out that Skopje never published statistics on its grants; the only tallies available come from EU monitoring reports.
"We have no data about how many citizenships were granted at all."
He sees the direction of travel as inevitable for any state exposed to Brussels' financial leverage, but warns that in non-EU countries, "the lack of transparency and also the ambiguity of 'merit' could quickly cause wholesale corruption."
The Accession Backdrop
North Macedonia has held EU candidate status since December 2005 — longer than any current candidate. Its citizenship policy cannot be separated from that stalled accession process.
A Greek veto over the country's name blocked progress until the 2018 Prespa Agreement, which unlocked NATO membership in 2020. France then delayed the opening of talks in 2019, and Bulgaria imposed its own block in 2020 over disputes about history, language and the Bulgarian minority.
A French-brokered compromise allowed the first intergovernmental conference on 19 July 2022. But opening the first negotiating cluster requires constitutional amendments listing Bulgarians among the country's constituent peoples — a step Prime Minister Hristijan Mickoski's government refuses to take without guarantees against further bilateral vetoes.
That impasse persists. The European Parliament's June 2026 report, adopted by 411 votes, again pressed for the amendments.
Implementation Will Decide
Whether the reform satisfies Brussels will turn on practice rather than statutory language.
A limited number of genuinely exceptional naturalisations — a strategic investor creating thousands of jobs, or a world-class athlete — would sit comfortably within the citizenship-by-exception traditions of many EU states. A steady flow of passports to ordinary investors at an unpublished price point would not.
"If ordinary investors continue receiving passports simply because they invest a certain amount of money, even if that amount is no longer officially published, then I would expect Brussels to argue that the substance of the previous program has not materially changed."— Theodora Jantol
Facing similar pressure, Montenegro closed its programme at the end of 2022, Moldova terminated its own in 2020, and Malta yielded to the CJEU in 2025.
For now, the reform remains a draft. The Interior Ministry posted the text on the ENER public register in June, starting a consultation window before it reaches the Cabinet. Only after the government adopts the draft in an official session does it go to the Assembly, where it faces committee scrutiny and up to three readings before a vote.
Quick Reference Summary
Aspect | Details |
Proposal | Remove €400,000 threshold and 10-job requirement |
Replacement | Case-by-case national interest assessment |
Fund route | €200,000 option removed |
Diaspora provision | Re-acquisition wait cut from 3 years to 3 months |
EU position | Abolish scheme and repeal legal basis |
CJEU precedent | Malta judgment, 29 April 2025 |
Grants (2005–2022) | 121 approvals, 40 refusals |
Status | Draft — ENER register, consultation stage |
Read Also
Official Resources
Resource | Link |
ENER – Regulatory Register | |
North Macedonia Ministry of Internal Affairs | |
European Commission – Visa Suspension Mechanism | |
CJEU – Commission v. Malta (C-181/23) |
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