site.btaKovachevski: VMRO-DPMNE Pledged Support for Constitutional Amendments to Kiril Petkov

During his visit to North Macedonia in January 2022, Bulgarian Prime Minister of Bulgaria Kiril Petkov met with VMRO-DPMNE, where he was assured that VMRO-DPMNE would support the inclusion of Bulgarians in the constitution, outgoing Prime Minister of the Republic of North Macedonia Dimitar Kovachevski said in a televised interview. 
  
"Just like Boyko Borissov asked whether VMRO-DPMNE supports the Goodneigbourliness Treaty with Bulgaria and in Bulgarian he received the answer ‘Yes, VMRO-DPMNE supports the treaty", Kovachevski recalled, asked why he accepted North Macedonia's negotiating framework with the EU, which has a condition for Bulgarians to be included in the constitution without having secured a parliamentary majority for this. The opposition VMRO-DPMNE refuses to vote through the changes to the basic law "under Bulgarian dictates", as a result of which North Macedonia has not opened the negotiating chapters. 
 
"On my first day as prime minister we had a meeting with Kiril Petkov in Skopje, then a few days later in Sofia, and in June 2022 we received a negotiating framework that practically guaranteed the start of negotiations with the EU, while bilateral issues are outside it. They are resolved at bilateral level. And the proof of this is the last EU meeting in Brussels. In the paragraph on the Republic of North Macedonia, it says that the country has successfully completed the screening process and what remains is to make the changes to the constitution, after which the second intergovernmental conference should be held without delay and the opening of the negotiating chapters should begin. The veto is now inside the country," Kovachevski said. 
 
He added that the negotiations with Bulgaria were conducted on the basis of the 2017 Friendship Treaty, which in turn was signed on the basis of a declaration from 1999 signed by Ljubco Georgievski, then Prime Minister of VMRO-DPMNE, and Ivan Kostov, as Prime Minister of Bulgaria, which for the first time started the regulation of relations between the two countries.

“The treaty is not a buffet. In a treaty where there is a compromise, it is normal for it to be on both sides. We wanted the negotiating framework to include the Macedonian language, without remarks and clarifications, and we got it. What was the rhetoric then of VMRO-DPMNE? That we would be Bulgarianised, assimilated and lose our language. A year and a half later, are we Bulgarianised? The negotiating framework approved by 27 countries is a guarantee of how the negotiations will develop", Kovachevski said. 

According to him, the Social Democratic Union of Macedonia is the only democratic party in North Macedonia and in the coalition that now governs the country are the parties that know that in 2030 North Macedonia will become a member of the EU, "while on the other side there is a party that says that (the country) can wait, if necessary, 100 years, and may not even enter the EU". 
 
"So on May 9, Europe Day, we will announce the victory of the European coalition and a European government will be formed again, with which North Macedonia will become a member of the EU", outgoing Prime Minister Dimitar Kovachevski said.