English
I am not one of those people who act rashly in politics. I am aware of the reality, and I am aware of the mistaken policy of the past, of previous governments. On the other hand, the expectations of some radical elements in our structure that we should withdraw from international agreements and negotiations — that would be ideal if we were alone in this world. But we are not alone, and we have to fight to recover the positions that were lost in the past, which, unfortunately, the previous government undermined, said Prime Minister Hristijan Mickoski in an interview with the MIA news agency in Washington, discussing the dispuet with Bulgaria that is blocking Macedonia from opening its EU accession talks.
Within that fight we always present arguments that are clearly and methodically understandable to our counterparts. We are prepared to argue our case. We are prepared, if the other side’s arguments overcome ours, to accept them. We are not being stubborn. We are not hard-headed. But our goal is to present our strategy and our truth in the best possible way, and through political debate — a political struggle on the international stage — to recover some of the positions that previous governments lost for us. I think we are attracting attention and are already seriously in the sights of our partners, especially in Europe. We are looking for solutions. I will never enter a process without having a predictable end. In my view, to get to such a process, trust first has to be built, and for that we have to talk. That willingness has to exist on both sides. This is a two-way street; it cannot come from one side only, the Prime Minister said.
Mickoski laid out a path forward, of talks with EU presence. “We will conduct the process in parallel. We are prepared to talk about aligning the action plan on minorities, of course in the presence of the international community, because if we conduct a dialogue only with our eastern neighbor, that confirms what we say — that it is a bilateral issue. I fear that such a dialogue would be a dialogue of people who may not succeed in hearing each other properly. That is why I believe someone else is needed at the table. Let that be, perhaps, a representative from the European Union. We continue to deliver the reforms that are part of the Growth Plan, the Reform Agenda”.
The Prime Minsiter added that the global situation is complex, including in Europe. “We are following political developments in Europe — the recent referendum in Iceland, the regional elections in Germany, the presidential elections coming in France. It is dynamic; it is dynamic everywhere in the world. In these challenges we have to find our chance as well, and that is what we are doing. In fact, we are looking for that chance, and all the results that are coming in — 4.3 percent GDP growth in the second quarter, growth in industrial production, growth in tourism, controlled inflation two to two and a half percent lower than the level in the European Union — all of these are indicators that after these 26–27 months of work as a government, results are finally coming, and from a deep minus, from a completely collapsed, humiliated, looted, belittled state, we are coming to a state of zero. I cannot say we have gone who-knows-how-far upward, but we are at a zero from which we now have to start building upward”, concluded Mickoski.