The political crisis in Spain will likely derail hopes that Macedonia joins NATO in time for the early December summit in London.

Spain is yet to ratify Macedonia’s membership into NATO, but because of the inability of its parties to agree on the next Government, it will probably have to hold early elections.

This would postpone the ratification into 2020. So far 22 countries ratified Macedonia’s NATO membership, and it’s not expected that some of the remaining NATO member states would object to the ratification, other than from technical reasons such as those in Spain.