EU officials have welcomed the ‘historic’ vote in North Macedonia’s parliament at the weekend, which has opened the way to the long-delayed start to accession talks for both North Macedonia and Albania.
North Macedonia’s Prime Minister Dimitar Kovacevski (L) and Albanian PM Edi Rama (R) at the Open Balkan Summit in Ohrid, North Macedonia, 8 June 2022. Photo: EPA-EFE/GEORGI LICOVSKI
The European Union High Representative Joseph Borrell announced that accession talks with Albania and North Macedonia will start on Tuesday, after Saturday’s vote in North Macedonia’s parliament on a French proposal removed the final obstacle posed by Bulgaria to the start of the process.
“This is a historic moment. They have spent so many years waiting with the status of candidate, with nothing happening; the final vote in North Macedonia parliament has opened a door and an intergovernmental conference will launch the process of negotiations, a long-awaited process,” Borrell told media on Monday.
“This is a good news. We didn’t have lot of good news, this is a good one [and] I hope it is going to increase our engagement with the Balkans,” Borrell added.
On Saturday, 68 members of North Macedonia’s 120-seat parliament voted in favour of a proposal made by French President Emanuel Macron to overcome deep disagreements between Skopje and Sofia.
Since 2020, North Macedonia’s path to EU membership talks had been blocked by Bulgaria over a so-called “history dispute”. Bulgaria insists that the Macedonian identity and language are of Bulgarian origin and that Bulgarians are repressed in North Macedonia and must be included in the country’s constitutional preamble as a state-founding ethnicity.
Meantime, Albania’s own EU integration process has suffered collateral damage from the standoff, as Albania’s EU talks are bracketed in one package with North Macedonia’s.
“There is no specific date for how long after the Council meeting the first IGC [inter-governmental conference] is held, but if we look at the region it can be three to six months after the Council meeting,” Fjoralba Caka, former Deputy Foreign Minister and Professor of European Union Law at the University of Tirana told BIRN.
The screening process for both countries was launched in 2018 – a preparatory stage of accession negotiations which includes 35 chapters, grouped into clusters.
According to its own explanation, “screening is a formal and technical exercise conducted by the European Commission in order to prepare the accession negotiations”.
“Further screening exercise may be carried out during the accession negotiations if EU law has been updated,” it adds.
Caka said the process of screening for Albania and North Macedonia will depend on many factors.
“The time [of completion] depends on many factors, whether technical, political or geopolitical. Croatia is a positive example, where the process lasted eight years, but we also have Turkey, which started the process in the 1960s and was blocked,” she added.
She added that “the political factor” has an important value according to the new methodology, meaning that political will and political engagement will be crucial to determine how fast the negotiations proceed.
The vote in parliament in Skopje was welcomed by the highest EU officials.
“Congratulations to North Macedonia on the vote that now paves the way for opening the accession negotiations rapidly,” EU Commission president Ursula Von der Leyen tweeted.
A start to Albanian and North Macedonian accession talks has been blocked since 2020 when Bulgaria imposed its veto over the unresolved history and identity issues.
The opposition in North Macedonia has held big protests in Skopje against the deal, insisting it is humiliating and dangerous to national interests.
Source link: balkaninsight.com
