On Saturday July 16, the Macedonian Parliament approved, with 68 votes out of 120, the agreement allowing the opening of negotiations for a forthcoming entry into the European Union, hitherto blocked by a Bulgarian veto. In the process, Skopje and Sofia signed a bilateral protocol on Sunday July 17, the last step before a first intergovernmental meeting at European level. A “historic phase”, welcomed Emmanuel Macron, who piloted this compromise during his EU presidency.
blockages
For more than seventeen years, Macedonia, the first Balkan state to obtain candidate status in 2005, has vegetated in the vestibule of the EU. Until 2018, Skopje faced the Greek lock, Athens considering the name “Macedonia” as its own and demanding a name change in exchange for the lifting of its veto.
After having complied with the wishes of its neighbour, the now “North Macedonia” then came up against the blockade of Sofia, from 2020, Bulgaria claiming portions of the territory of Macedonia and considering the Macedonian language as a Bulgarian dialect.
On June 24, Sofia finally lifted her veto, nevertheless imposing some conditions taken up by Brussels in the development of its compromise. Among them, the modification by North Macedonia of its Constitution to include Bulgarians in the ethnic groups officially recognized by the country.
“Complete Bulgarianization”
In addition to accepting this condition, Macedonia has pledged to implement the 2017 Friendship Treaty aimed at eradicating anti-Bulgarian speech. The settlement of other disputes between Skopje and Sofia, including language issues, remains however the responsibility of the administrations directly concerned and is not part of the “French proposal”.
However, substantive negotiations will only begin after the adoption of the constitutional amendments by the Macedonian legislative assembly. However, this type of amendment requires a two-thirds majority. A difficult threshold to reach due to the opposition of the nationalist party VMRO-DPMNE, which castigated a “complete bulgarization” of Macedonia and sees there an opportunity to overthrow the Prime Minister, Dimitar Kovačevski, to provoke early elections.
Violent clashes
On July 5, the announcement of a possible compromise with Bulgaria and the European Union provoked violent clashes between nationalist demonstrations and the police in Skopje. More than 40 police officers were injured and a dozen demonstrators were arrested. « Violence and hatred have never been and will not be a solution to our problems,” Dimitar Kovačevski then declared.