North Macedonia’s Parliament, Sobranie, unanimously voted late on Tuesday to ratify the country's NATO membership agreement, clearing one of the last hurdles in the Balkan nation's bid to become the alliance's 30th member country.

The vote, okayed by all 114 MPs present the 120-seat Parliament, took place just before the legislature is due to be dissolved later this week before an early election scheduled for early April, news agency Beta reported.

Although passed in Parliament, North Macedonia’s NATO membership will formally come into effect only after Spain – the last member country to do so – ratifies the Protocol on North Macedonia’s accession to the club.

North Macedonia’s President Stevo Pendarovski said the membership “in the most powerful alliance in the world is a privilege but also a huge obligation.”

After the vote, the flag of the NATO alliance was added to the flags of North Macedonia and the European Union on display in Sobranie’s assembly, and decorative flowers in the alliance’s blue and white colours were added to the desk of Speaker Talat Xhaferi, Beta reported.

Skopje had started the NATO accession process in 2018, after receiving an invitation to join the alliance at a NATO summit in Brussels in July that year. The accession agreement was signed in February 2019 and had been ratified so far by 28 of the alliance’s 29 member countries.

Spain had started the process of ratifying the agreement after its new government was formed last month, but due to a complicated legislative procedure, it is unlikely to be done before Sobranie gets dissolved.

Following Spain’s approval, North Macedonia will become the fourth country from former Yugoslavia to join the alliance, after Slovenia (2004), Croatia (2009), and Montenegro (2017).  

Membership in NATO and the EU are seen as North Macedonia’s key objectives, and its 2018 agreement with Greece which had ended a decades-long naming dispute had cleared a major stumbling block in the small nation’s bid to join the two clubs.

Although North Macedonia had applied for EU membership, the launch of membership negotiations has been postponed by Brussels twice last year, leading the Social Democrat Prime Minister, Zoran Zaev, to call for an early election on April 12.