Bulgaria’s parliament has given the Sofia government a green light to conditionally lift its veto on a start to North Macedonia’s EU accession talks, raising hopes of a possible breakthrough.
Legislators prepare for a session in the Bulgarian parliament. Photo: EPA-EFE/VASSIL DONEV
Just two days after the ousting of PM Kiril Petkov in a no-confidence vote, Bulgarian legislators on Friday adopted a declaration which would allow their government to potentially lift its veto on starting EU membership talks for neighbouring North Macedonia.
Some 170 MPs in the 240-seat parliament supported the declaration, 37 were against and 21 abstained. Both MPs from the outgoing ruling coalition and from the main opposition GERB party voted “Yes” to the motion.
The declaration, in essence, accepts the so-called French proposal for a breakthrough, which was officially handed to both sides last week as a last-ditch effort to solve the dispute, but which reportedly has not yet taken on a final form that would be acceptable for both sides.
In this regard, the Bulgarian parliament declarations set additional preconditions, which if met, could result in lifting the veto.
One seeks guarantee that Skopje’s performance on good neighbourliness would remain a “horizontal criterion” throughout the process of North Macedonia’s EU integration, and that the European Commission should inform the Council on this issue before each intergovernmental conference.
The parliament also wants “improvement” of Brussels’ draft negotiating framework for North Macedonia “to more clearly reflect the position that nothing in the process of accession of North Macedonia to the EU can be interpreted as Bulgarian recognition of the existence of a ‘Macedonian’ language”.
North Macedonia’s path to EU membership talks has been blocked by the government in Sofia since 2020 over the 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, among others, as a state-founding ethnicity.
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.
Whether this move by Sofia and the ad can unclog the stalled EU accession talks is yet to be seen.
North Macedonia’s PM, Dimitar Kovacevski, rejected the draft version of the French proposal, in its current form. On Friday, after the Bulgarian parliament’s move, Skopje sounded reserved on whether it would accept a slightly altered proposal.
“We will stay in communication, waiting to see what will they [France] deliver as a final proposal,” North Macedonia’s Foreign Minister Bujar Osmani told media in Skopje shortly after the decision of the Bulgarian parliament.
On Thursday, at the EU-Western Balkans summit in Brussels, optimism was scant. North Macedonia’s Kovacevski outlined that for the French EU presidency proposal to work, the agreement must guarantee key things for his country.
Among them is a clear formulation on the Macedonian language in the negotiating framework as well as clear protection of the Macedonia identity, an agreement that historical issues cannot be criteria in the negotiating framework, a start to EU talks before a complicated procedure is opened about adding Bulgarians to the constitution, and firm guarantees from Bulgaria and the EU that Sofia won’t further condition the integration process with additional demands.
North Macedonia, which has been waiting 17 years to open membership talks, blocked first by neighbouring Greece and now by Bulgaria, is frustrated by the long wait. But the Russian invasion of Ukraine has renewed Brussels’ efforts to speed up the stalled integration of the Western Balkans.
Source link: balkaninsight.com
