North Macedonia

It is legally on the books but not functioning in practice. This is the clearest case in the region of a programme that exists in law and not in fact. The Article 11 basis and the implementing decree have not been repealed. But no investor has obtained a passport through the EUR 200,000 fund route introduced in 2021. The European Commission reported that North Macedonia had received five economic-citizenship applications and processed none of them. Even Henley & Partners, the appointed promoter, says the government is still setting up the program. The roughly 121 economic citizenships that promoters cite were granted between 2005 and 2022 under discretionary national-interest naturalisation, not through the fund programme.

We do not credit it. Claims of an official reopening in 2026 come only from self-described authorised agents. They stand to gain commercially from the claim, and it is contradicted by Henley's own page and by independent April 2026 analysis. There is also a sunset clause. The scheme terminates automatically on EU accession, so even in the scenario where it revives, it has a fixed expiry. Any adviser who presents the EUR 200,000 route as a live path to an EU-candidate passport is, based on the available evidence, mis-selling it.

It has the cleanest tax proposition in the Western Balkans. There is a genuine 10% flat personal income tax since 1 January 2023. The real standout is a 0% capital gains rate on securities and investment-fund shares held more than two years, against 10% otherwise. There is no wealth tax. That combination, paired with a long-horizon securities portfolio, is the actual reason to look at the country, not the phantom citizenship programme.

Yes, and this is its most permissive feature. Under Article 2 of the Citizenship Law, it fully permits dual citizenship with no renunciation requirement. That is the most accommodating rule on this list, and a genuine advantage over Montenegro, Georgia or Azerbaijan, which all force renunciation. The route to that citizenship, however, is ordinary naturalisation after eight years of legal and continuous residence, not the CBI story. Eight years is the longest naturalisation clock among the viable Balkan jurisdictions.

Through the business and self-employment route. That is the real path, not the CBI. Amendments dated 26 September 2025 simplified temporary residence generally, and the business and self-employment route requires no labour-market test and no educational documentation. That makes it materially easier than the employment route. It does require a genuine, detailed business plan and proof of substantial means. This is not a shell-company route. It leads to permanent residence after three consecutive years, then citizenship after eight.

No. The property route is restricted to nationals and residents of EU or OECD member states. A non-EU, non-OECD national, a Russian national, for instance, cannot use it at all. This is a hard blocker that most comparison tables omit. Such applicants would need to rely on the business and self-employment route instead.

It appears not to. The OECD seems to list it among developing countries with no first-exchange date set, but the OECD portal returns 403, so it is unconfirmed. Do not treat non-participation as certain. Even if correct, it is a wasting asset rather than a strategy. EU accession eliminates exactly this status, and we would not build a plan on it. Inheritance tax, CFC rules and exit tax could also not be verified, so they should not be described as none.

It is a reasonable mid-tier document, ranked approximately 38th on the Henley Passport Index of January 2026, and it includes visa-free Schengen access. That access is precisely the asset Brussels has warned the country not to jeopardise. The Commission has explicitly cautioned North Macedonia against operating an investor-citizenship scheme, citing circumvention of the Schengen short-stay visa procedure and risk to the visa-free arrangement itself. In other words, a functioning CBI programme would threaten the very access that makes the passport worth having.