Thewesternbalkans.
According to BTA, during a press conference marking one year of the government of Mickoski, the Minister for European Affairs Orhan Murtezani stated that North Macedonia has always shown readiness “to seek solutions and start negotiations” for EU accession.
“When we listen to senior representatives from Brussels, they say that constitutional changes need to be made. When we listen to representatives from Bulgaria, they say: constitutional changes, negotiation framework, protocols. This means that the position is not the same. We say that if we accept everything that Bulgaria insists on, including the second protocol, it poses a great risk because if we read the protocol carefully, we see that everything there is bilateral and all these steps in the future could very easily turn into blockades,” said Murtezani. However, according to him, the key problem is Bulgaria’s unilateral position, which is becoming the common position of the EU, reports the Macedonian publication “Nezavisen.”
“The Bulgarian veto is an obstacle to the start of negotiations under the negotiation framework, but we are focusing on the Growth Plan because this framework allows EU access for citizens of the Western Balkans to services that were previously exclusively for EU member states,” said Murtezani. The EU’s Growth Plan for the Western Balkans will be a key topic in discussions during the visit of EU Commissioner for Enlargement, Marta Koss, to Skopje, but at every meeting, politicians from North Macedonia will also discuss finding possible solutions to unblock the country’s negotiations with the EU.
Comment: If Minister Murtezani has just now understood that the Bulgarian position has become European, he is late by at least three years. Or rather, the few phrases in Murtezani’s statement show a lack of any real arguments in defence of the current position RNM. The search for disagreement in the positions of Bulgaria and the EU, using terminology (protocols and negotiation framework), does not help him either.”
