Accession of Macedonia to NATO
Following an agreement in June 2018 to rename the country the Republic of North Macedonia, NATO agreed to consider extending an invitation to the country to join at its summit on 11–12 July. On 11 July 2018, NATO invited Macedonia to begin membership talks, saying the country could join the organization once the naming issue was resolved. Formal accession talks began on 18 October 2018. Greece is expected to be the first NATO member state to ratify Macedonia’s NATO accession protocol.
Partnership for Peace
NATO builds relationships with partners through military-to-military cooperation on training, exercises, disaster planning and response, science and environmental issues, professionalization, policy planning, and relations with civilian government.Thirteen former member states of the PfP (namely Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Montenegro, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia), have subsequently joined NATO. On April 26, 1995 Malta became a member of PfP; it left on October 27, 1996 in order to maintain its neutrality. On March 20, 2008 Malta decided to reactivate their PfP membership; this was accepted by NATO at the summit in Bucharest on April 3, 2008. During the NATO summit in Riga on November 29, 2006, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, and Serbia were invited to join PfP, which they did on December 14, 2006.