English
The perseverence of the truckers from Macedonia and from the Balkan region was key to get the European Union to react, said Deputy Prime Minister Aleksandar Nikolski, after the trucking crisis was averted. The European Union agreed to consider truckers from the Balkans as professionals who can stay in the EU longer than the 90 days per 180 days period.
The EU sped up the entire procedure and they will adopt this change much sooner than was exepcted. It’s a 19 page document covering the new Schengen zone rules, and it has a keyword, classifying truckers from the Balkans as professionals. This is the first time that the EU resolved this problem in a fundamental way. This was one of the three solutions that was offered, said Nikoloski, who was pushing hard in the past period to have this issue resolved.
The Deputy Prime Minister also supported the brief protests at the border crossings in Macedonia and the Balkans, where truckers stopped all freight transit. Nikoloski will visit Brussels early next week and will meet with the trucker associations after his return.