English
Prime Minister Hristijan Mickoski today said that he called former Bulgarian President Rumen Radev to congratulate him on his election victory and the expected election as Prime Minister. Mickoski added that the Macedonian public needs to be aware of the extent of the dispute with Bulgaria, who is blocking Macedonia’s EU accession. As President, Radev was one of the most hardline Bulgarian politicians on the dispute with Macedonia.
We are always prepared for dialogue, to over come this dispute that we don’t even know where it showed up. Their official position is that there is a proposal that was accepted by our previous Government and that is enough for them to say that they have found a solution. I don’t think it is enough – if it were, the issue would have been resolved by now. I’m prepared to sit down with them, to find a sustainable solution that will in the long term mean the integration of Macedonia in the EU, a process that Bulgaria would gain a lot from, Prime Minister Mickoski said.
The Prime Minister added that Macedonia is constantly asking for meetings, in coordination with Brussels, but that when the EU intervenes to try to secure a bilateral meeting between Macedonia and Bulgaria, the Bulgarian side says that there is no need for EU involvement. “Then, when we ask to talk direcly to them, they insist that there already is a European proposal. This creates a confusing, chaotic situation”, said Mickoski, adding that the Macedonian approach will be to conduct reforms at home first and to capitalize on the progress that is being noted in the coming European Commission report.
We won’t get far if we try to go along the line of least resistance, to be supplicants, kneeling, signing blank pieces of paper. I know that it is hard, that the citizens are losing their patience, that decades went by but the essence is to resolve problems and not create new ones. True, it will take time, but I can’t accept something that is contrary to my beliefs. What the previous Government did is the greatest historic capitulation that could ever be inflicted on the Macedonian people, Mickoski said.
The Prime Minister revealed that Bulgaria is currently also blocking Macedonia’s inclusion in the Three Seas iniatitve, even after the country was invited to join as an associate member by the United States.
The situation is not naive. And we hear the SDSM leader say that we are the ones provoking the Greeks and the Bulgarians. How do we provoke them? By building a gas pipeline to Greece and new transmission lines? By opening the pipeline that was left to rust for years and that now connects us to the port of Solun? By removing the roadblocks to construction of Corridor 8 to Bulgaria? We are not provoking anybody. It’s not a provocation to fight for your position and identity. That is a principled approach, Mickoski said.