site.btaPM Mickoski Seeks Parley with Bulgarian Counterpart

The Prime Minister of the Republic of North Macedonia, Hristijan Mickoski, said that he will request a meeting with Bulgarian Prime Minister Rosen Zhelyazkov. In an interview for the 360 Degrees programme on MRT1, Mickoski was asked whether he would request such a meeting, after the government of North Macedonia had repeatedly said that it was waiting for a government to be elected by Parliament in Bulgaria, with which it could discuss the country's EU integration and the proposal for the constitutional change to come into force after North Macedonia becomes an EU member.

This question was put to the Prime Minister on Sunday as well, and his response was that he is ready to talk with anyone, at any time, to unblock the country's EU accession negotiations.

“I have no problem initiating a meeting with Bulgaria. We are neighbors and it is logical to initiate such a meeting, to get to know each other. We are colleagues, we cooperate, and we are together in NATO. I will absolutely seek to have a meeting. Let’s see in this environment whether we can overcome our differences regarding how we see North Macedonia’s path toward full EU membership and how they see it. This is the difference overall, because we definitely have different views on the same topic. We have our own strategy, which is essentially whether after two decades we will be allowed to start the negotiation process and whether it will be evaluated based on merits, not bilateral disputes. Let’s see if we can find a solution here and then look for a solution for everything else,” Hristijan Mickoski said in the interview.

At a press conference earlier Monday, the leader of the opposition SDSM, Venko Filipce, also expressed support for Mickoski's plans for a meeting with Bulgarian Prime Minister Rosen Zhelyazkov.

"Now, there is a political government in Sofia, and I absolutely support the Prime Minister in seeking to have a meeting with the political government and the Prime Minister of Bulgaria as soon as possible. Let’s see if we can get additional guarantees or not. We will support any proposal that is better [than the negotiation framework agreed with the SDSM government]. We will absolutely support any additional guarantees [for the accession negotiations], but let the meeting take place as soon as possible because time is running out. Albania and Montenegro are making significant progress,” Filipce said, adding that previous governments led by SDSM did everything they could to protect the country's positions during negotiations on the so-called French proposal.

A second intergovernmental conference with North Macedonia and a real start of the country’s EU negotiations is conditional on the inclusion of Bulgarians in the country’s Constitution via constitutional amendments. That is seen as unacceptable by the government of VMRO-DPMNE, which considers it a retreat from national interests. VMRO-DPMNE insists that if there is to be predictability in the country’s EU integration, constitutional changes should come into force only after the negotiations are concluded and the EU member states ratify the accession treaty of North Macedonia to the EU.