North Macedonia–United Arab Emirates relations is recorded in this encyclopedia from the source named below.
Overview
International relations exist between the nations of North Macedonia and the United Arab Emirates. North Macedonia has an embassy in Abu Dhabi. United Arab Emirates has a non-resident embassy in Rome. In March 2023, the President of North Macedonia, Stevo Pendarovski, met with the President of the United Arab Emirates, Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan. Sheikh Mohamed expressed wishes for a further enhancement of relations between the UAE and North Macedonia. North Macedonia brought a delegation along to the meeting, and the UAE involved its ministers in the meeting. After the meeting in 2023, a memorandum of understanding was announced providing visa exemptions to holders of passports issued by either of the two nation's governments. The MoU was described in the Khaleej Times as 'testament to the strengthening of bilateral relations between the United Arab Emirates and the Republic of North Macedonia and aims to facilitate travel between the two nations.' Later that month, the UAE sent a delegation to Ohrid in North Macedonia, and announced its support of a European Union-sponsored plan to normalise relations between Serbia and the Republic of Kosovo. Due to its geography, Balkan security issues are important to North Macedonia. This support from the UAE was re-iterated by the UAE's Minister of Foreign Affairs, Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan, after visiting Belgrade and Pristina. Other bilateral meetings between the leaders of the two nations include an October 2022 meeting between the Prime Minister of North Macedonia and the UAE's prime minister Bin Rashid Al Maktoum. International flights between the two nations was discussed at that meeting. Some citizens of the United Arab Emirates have fled the state, and sought asylum in North Macedonia. These applications for asylum have in some cases been rejected. The rejection of Hind Mohammad Albolooki's asylum application in 2019 by North Macedonia made international headlines.
Source and reuse
The descriptive text above is drawn from the English-language encyclopedia article North Macedonia–United Arab Emirates relations, reused under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike licence and attributed in the sources block on this page. Figures in the infobox come from Wikidata and carry that project's own provenance; they should be checked against the cited source before being relied on.
Editorial note
This record is a sourced summary, not original research. Where the underlying material is silent on a point, this article is silent too. Last reviewed 2026-09-23.