site.btaNorth Macedonia PM: Washington Visit Was Successful, Loan from Hungary Is As Much as Is Needed

The Prime Minister of the Republic of North Macedonia, Hristijan Mickoski, assessed his visit to Washington for the NATO Summit earlier in July as highly successful. Mickoski was speaking Monday during a visit to Ohrid, where he turned the first sod for a new sports hall. Commenting the loan from Hungary, which the opposition in the country strongly criticizes, Mickoski said that the framework of economic cooperation with Hungary was open and the announced loan is as much as the country needs.

On July 11, 2024, North Macedonia's Prime Minister said that he had reached agreement with his Hungarian counterpart Viktor Orban for a EUR 500 million loan to Skopje. The loan is part of a deal for future "special economic cooperation" between the two countries, reached during a meeting in Washington.

The Prime Minister said that municipalities will use the funding for specific projects and companies will receive aid due to the current adverse market conditions, but they will have to invest as much money as they receive, hire at least 5,000 new employee and achieve output growth of 5% over inflation.

Regarding the NATO Summit, Mickoski said that delegation had an intense agenda and the partners had an opportunity to see different politicians from North Macedonia than before, “not politicians who say 'yes' to everything, but ones with a clear plan and priorities”.

"We presented our plan, we said what our priorities are, as citizens and as a country, and I think they got information about something they had not heard before. We will stand up for our interests with dignity, we will agree on something, we will disagree on other things. We have no intention of robbing our citizens or North Macedonia. On the contrary, the law must prevail, institutions must work, the politicians must be servants of the people as much as this is possible. The time when we had a few happy politicians and hundreds of thousands of unhappy citizens is over, now the situation has to be reversed," Mickoski said.