North Macedonia Citizenship by Investment

The Law prints no figure at all, and what matters is where that figure lives — because the instrument that would set it could not be verified at an official source. Article 11(2) delegates outright: the Government shall by decree determine the criteria for particular scientific, economic, cultural, sporting or other national interest.

The consolidated text does not mention investment, and it mentions the euro only in the adjective for European and in a fine of 15 to 30 euros in denar equivalent under Article 25-a, never as a threshold.

The most recent amending decree the Ministry of Interior publishes, Official Gazette of RNM no. 42 of 19 February 2021, carries no figure either: it adds a scientific criterion and assigns work to the Fund for Innovation and Technological Development.

The amount therefore sits in the base decree, and the amending decree itself cites that base fully enough for anyone to find it: Official Gazette of the Republic of Macedonia nos.

9/05 and 161/12, together with Official Gazette of the Republic of North Macedonia no. 255/19.

Neither online route to that figure is usable: the programme's own portal, mkcitizenship.gov.mk, is currently inaccessible, while the Innovation Fund's site, fitr.mk, carries almost no content and redirects visitors to an unrelated domain, so it cannot serve as a source.

The outcome is citizenship by naturalisation, and the two provisions that govern it repay close reading because one gives and the other takes back.

Article 13 fixes the moment: the person acquires citizenship of the Republic of North Macedonia on the day the admission decision is served — not the day it is signed, nor the day it is gazetted, but the day it is handed over.

Article 14 keeps a revocation door, and it is wider than commonly assumed: the admission decision may be annulled after service if it is established that, when applying, the foreigner gave untrue or inaccurate data or used false documents.

The window for annulment is not a separate number but is anchored to criminal law: paragraph 2 provides that the decision is annulled within the period prescribed for the lapse of criminal prosecution for that offence.

And paragraph 3 carries the consequence to others: in such a case, the admission decisions of minor children who acquired citizenship at the same time as their parents are annulled as well.

Authority does not rest on an automatic set of criteria: Article 11(3) provides that the government gives an opinion on whether the special interest exists, so this is a political judgement written into law rather than a scoring exercise.

This route has no residence clock — the very thing that separates it from every other path to naturalisation in the same Law — but it does have three procedural deadlines, and all three sit in Article 7 rather than Article 11, so reading Article 11 alone loses them entirely.

The first belongs to the applicant: the body deciding the security condition under paragraph 1 item 8 shall issue its decision within six months of the foreigner filing the application.

The second is internal and short: the authorised officer of the Ministry of Interior handling the case must, within 30 days of receiving the application, request ex officio the evidence and data needed to prove the conditions in items 1, 2, 6, 7 and 8.

The third belongs to the body asked: the authorised officer of the public authority from which that evidence is requested must supply it within 90 days of receiving the request.

These three do not add up to a total processing time, and the Law states no overall figure — so six months should not be read as the deadline for the whole file; six months is the deadline for one condition.

The last deadline is the operative one, Article 13: citizenship arises on the day the decision is served. As for what comes before, what this route does not carry is the seven years of residence required for ordinary naturalisation — see the residence condition cell.

The residence condition for this route is none, and that is not an inference but the way Article 11 is drafted: a foreigner who meets the conditions of Article 7(1) items 1 and 8 may acquire citizenship by naturalisation if doing so constitutes a particular national interest of a scientific, economic, cultural, sporting or other kind.

Only two items, so Article 7 must be opened to see what those two are and what the other eight, dropped, would have been.

The two retained are light enough to stop almost nobody: item 1 is being 18 years of age, item 8 is that admission does not endanger the security and defence of the state.

The eight dropped are where the value lies, and first among them is item 2: legal and continuous residence on the territory for at least seven years up to the date of application.

Dropped with it are four further items.

Item 3 is secured accommodation and a permanent source of subsistence at a level ensuring material and social security. Item 6 is command of Macedonian sufficient to be readily understood, a condition normally certified by a special commission formed by the Government.

Item 9 is signing an oath of loyalty, and item 10 is release from the existing citizenship or proof that it will be granted.

How large that waiver is shows best against the spousal route: Article 9 relieves a married applicant of only four items, 2, 3, 6 and 10, so the oath still stands and one continuous year of residence is still required. The national-interest route is excused more than marriage is.

Dependants fall into two groups travelling under two different articles, so merging them misstates both.

The spouse sits in Article 11(4): besides the foreigner under paragraph 1, their spouse may also naturalise, but under the conditions of Article 9.

That means the spouse does not inherit the wide waiver of the national-interest route and must satisfy one of the two marriage paths in their own right.

The first path is being married to a citizen for at least three years and, up to the date of application, legally resident continuously for at least one year on the territory.

The second is being married for at least eight years, living legally and permanently abroad but having a firm and effective connection with the Republic of North Macedonia.

Children sit in Article 12, which splits three ways: if both parents naturalise, a child under 18 acquires citizenship with them.

If only one parent does, a child under 18 acquires it where that parent so requests and the child lives in North Macedonia, or where both parents request it, regardless of where the child lives; and on full adoption, an adoptee under 18 living with the adopter acquires it too.

One condition is easily missed: a child who has reached 15 must also give their own consent. The attached risk sits in Article 14(3): if the parents' decision is annulled for false data, the decisions of the minor children who acquired citizenship at the same time are annulled with it.

A person granted citizenship under this programme receives the North Macedonia passport, so the figure in this cell is the figure for that passport itself.

According to the Passport Index of Prosperous Intelligence, on data dated 30 September 2026, the North Macedonia passport reaches 127 destinations without applying for a consular visa in advance. The figure combines three forms of entry and does not count an e-Visa that must be obtained beforehand:

It is therefore a measure of how easily the holder travels, not a count of visa-free countries in the narrow sense.

For comparison, on the same source and the same method of counting, the Vietnamese passport reaches 44 destinations. The two lists of destinations do not nest inside one another, so the difference is an indication rather than a list of places newly opened.

Prosperous Intelligence dates its data and advises checking with the destination’s official authorities before travelling.

The Law imposes no tax obligation on a person naturalised by this route, although it does mention tax in one place that a quick reading could easily take the wrong way.

Every mention of tax sits inside one list of evidence in a transitional provision. That list uses taxes already paid as proof of a past fact rather than imposing any obligation going forward.

The list covers proof of paid personal income tax of workers, personal income tax from agricultural activity, and personal income tax from independent economic and professional activity.

It also covers tax on remuneration from copyright, patents and technical improvements, tax on income from property and property rights, property tax, and inheritance and gift tax.

The only sum the Law actually imposes on an individual is a penalty rather than a tax: Article 25-a sets a fine of 15 to 30 euros in denar equivalent for an offence.

Anyone needing the real tax position of a naturalised person must open the tax authority's own sources, not the Citizenship Law.

No fee figure can be read, and three separate reasons lead to that same result — so they should not be collapsed into one sentence saying nothing was found. First, the Law fixes no fee and does not mention a charge in any provision.

Second, the Government's amending decree, Official Gazette of RNM no. 42 of 19 February 2021, does not set a fee but assigns someone else to set it, and the sentence deserves quoting in full.

Article 2 inserts a new paragraph into Article 3 of the base decree.

It provides that the Fund for Innovation and Technological Development shall adopt a Rulebook on the procedure for establishing the existence of particular economic interest and a tariff determining the fee for conducting that procedure, subject to the prior consent of the Government.

So the applicant pays a body that is not the Ministry of Interior, under a tariff found in neither the Law nor the decree — and that Fund's own domain now returns 200 with almost no text.

Third, the Ministry of Interior does publish payment slips for admission to citizenship, two files, but they are image scans with no extractable text. That does not mean the files are empty — the amounts live inside pictures and need a person to open them.

The only sum printed as text anywhere in this chain is the fine of 15 to 30 euros in Article 25-a of the Law.