North Macedonia is an upper-middle-income country according to the World Bank's definitions[9] and has undergone considerable economic reform since its independence in developing an open economy.

[26][27] A non-binding[28] national referendum on the matter passed with 90% approval but did not reach the required 50% turnout amidst a boycott, leaving the final decision with parliament to ratify the result.

[45] In the late 6th century BC, the Achaemenid Persians under Darius the Great conquered the Paeonians, incorporating what is today North Macedonia within their vast territories.

[50] Philip's son Alexander the Great conquered the remainder of the region and incorporated it in his empire, reaching as far north as Scupi, but the city and the surrounding area remained part of Dardania.

[54] Whilst Greek remained the dominant language in the eastern part of the Roman empire, especially south of the Jireček Line, Latin spread to some extent in Macedonia.

[66] Rumelia Eyalet was abolished in 1867 and that territory of Macedonia subsequently became part of vilayets of Manastir, Kosova and Selanik until the end of Ottoman rule in 1912.

With the beginning of the Bulgarian National Revival in the 19th century, many of the reformers were from this region, including the Miladinov brothers,[67] Rajko Žinzifov, Joakim Krčovski,[68] Kiril Pejčinoviḱ[69] and others.

[81][82] During the First World War, most of today's North Macedonia was part of the Bulgarian occupied zone of Serbia after the country was invaded by the Central Powers in the fall of 1915.

[88] After the capitulation of Bulgaria and the end of the First World War, the area returned under Belgrade control as part of the newly formed Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes[89] and saw a reintroduction of anti-Bulgarian measures.

The Serbian government pursued a policy of forced Serbianisation in the region,[90][91] which included systematic suppression of Bulgarian activists, altering family surnames, internal colonisation, exploiting workers, and intense propaganda.

[94] The Bulgarian government of Alexander Malinov in 1918 offered to give Pirin Macedonia for that purpose after World War I,[95] but the Great Powers did not adopt this idea because Serbia and Greece opposed it.

[96] IMRO followed by starting an insurgent war in Vardar Macedonia, together with Macedonian Youth Secret Revolutionary Organization, which also conducted guerrilla attacks against the Serbian administrative and army officials there.

[107] Harsh rule by the occupying forces encouraged many Vardar Macedonians to support the Communist Partisan resistance movement of Josip Broz Tito after 1943,[f] and the National Liberation War ensued.

Most of them re-entered occupied Yugoslavia in early October 1944 and moved from Sofia to Niš, Skopje and Pristina with the strategic task of blocking the German forces withdrawing from Greece.

With the Bled agreement, in 1947 Bulgaria formally confirmed the envisioned unification of the Macedonian region, but postponed this act until after the formation of the future Federation.

After the Tito–Stalin split the region of Pirin Macedonia remained part of Bulgaria and later the Bulgarian Communist Party revised its view of the existence of a separate Macedonian nation and language.

[126] In April 2017, about 200 protesters - reportedly mostly from the conservative VMRO-DPMNE party, stormed the Macedonian Parliament in response to the election of Talat Xhaferi, an ethnic Albanian and former National Liberation Army commander during the 2001 conflict, as the Speaker of the Assembly.

[127][128] Upon its coming to power in 2006, but especially since the country's non-invitation to NATO in 2008, the VMRO-DPMNE government pursued a policy of "Antiquisation" ("Antikvizatzija") as a way of putting pressure on Greece as well as for the purposes of domestic identity-building.

In August 2017, what was then the Republic of Macedonia signed a friendship agreement with Bulgaria, aiming to end the "anti-Bulgarian ideology" in the country and to solve the historical issues between the two.

Under the Prespa agreement, signed with Greece on 17 June 2018, the country agreed to change its name to the Republic of North Macedonia and stop public use of the Vergina Sun.

[133] The withdrawal of the Greek veto, along with the signing the friendship agreement with Bulgaria, resulted in the European Union on 27 June approving the start of accession talks, which were expected to take place in 2019, under the condition that the Prespa deal was implemented.

Subsequently, on 12 February the Macedonian government announced the formal activation of the constitutional amendments which effectively renamed the country as North Macedonia and informed accordingly the United Nations and its member states.

[147][148] On 17 November 2020, Bulgaria refused to approve the European Union's negotiation framework for North Macedonia, effectively blocking the official start of accession talks with this country.

The EU's intention regarding the country's accession seems unclear, excluding desire to maintain its geopolitical influence here, countering the Chinese and Russian impact in the Western Balkans.

North Macedonia is a landlocked country that is geographically clearly defined by a central valley formed by the Vardar river and framed along its borders by mountain ranges.

The country has four national parks: North Macedonia is a parliamentary democracy with an executive government composed of a coalition of parties from the unicameral legislature (Собрание, Sobranie; Assembly in English) and an independent judicial branch with a constitutional court.

[180] Prime minister Zoran Zaev announced his resignation after his party, the Social Democratic Union, suffered losses in local elections in October 2021.

[196] North Macedonia is a member of the following international and regional organisations:[197] IMF (since 1992), WHO (since 1993), EBRD (since 1993), Central European Initiative (since 1993), Council of Europe (since 1995), OSCE (since 1995), SECI (since 1996), La Francophonie (since 2001), WTO (since 2003), CEFTA (since 2006), and NATO (since 2020).

At the NATO 2008 Bucharest summit, Macedonia failed to gain an invitation to join the organisation because Greece vetoed the move after the dispute over the name issue.

[209] Due to a number of employment measures as well as the successful process of attracting multinational corporations, and according to the State Statistical Office of North Macedonia, the country's unemployment rate in the first quarter of 2015 decreased to 27.3%.