The government expects the opposition to join the working groups for constitutional amendments. The opposition, on the other hand, believes that early elections are needed, because this parliamentary composition, according to it, does not have a mandate to change the Constitution.

In response to a journalist’s question, Prime Minister Dimitar Kovacevski repeated that the next stage for the process of constitutional amendments is the formation of an expert working group, which will be coordinated by the Ministry of Justice, with the aim of preparing the amendments, after which there will be a broad public debate, and then a parliamentary one in several steps.

We are currently talking about constitutional amendments, but none of the citizens have seen what those constitutional amendments look like. So the first stage is to have them written by experts. We are not only talking about the inclusion of Bulgarians in the Constitution, but we are also talking about other communities that have expressed their desire to be part of our Constitution, in which there are already others that are included, Kovacevski said.

As the prime minister said, the working group will include experts in constitutional law and lawyers, and experts from political parties, including the opposition ones, will be invited.

I believe that the opposition should accept this, even though it has been shown in the past that they do not want to participate in anything except blocking the Parliament. However, I think that this time they should participate, Kovacevski said.

EU Ambassador David Geer at the press conference in the Government on the occasion of the budget support of 80 million euros, emphasized that the support from the European Union will increase over time, because the accession process refers to the implementation of reforms in many areas and emphasized that the country’s future and the region is in the EU.

When it comes to corruption, he said that there is no tolerance for this phenomenon and it is not about identifying individuals, but about changing the system.

During the parliamentary debate on the EC Country Report for 2022, the Deputy Prime Minister for European Affairs Bojan Maricic yesterday emphasized that the Parliament should be a forum for constructive political dialogue, especially when it comes to the EU reform agenda and work together with the Government on planning on the legislative agenda with priority on reforms, but also on the constitutional amendments that follow.

According to him, the best thing for the state and the citizens when it comes to the European agenda and EU membership is to leave the parties and party interests aside and let the responsibility towards the citizens prevail and jointly fulfill the obligations of the biggest Macedonian project – ensuring membership of Macedonia in the EU.

During the debate, MPs from the opposition VMRO-DPMNE emphasized that the score in this report on progress in the country is 1.61, and in 2020 the score was 2.0 and that the “pro-European coalition” and the country are going backwards.

Bojan Stojanovski from VMRO-DPMNE pointed out that the Report has 145 pages and that is “just as many criticisms of the work of the Government” and “verbal slaps” for the ruling coalition. He repeated the request of the opposition party to organize early elections, and then to discuss constitutional amendments. According to him, the ruling majority lacks a double-digit number of MPs for a majority for the constitutional amendments, and not as much as it claims.