As hopes for opening EU accession talks in June keep fading. Foreign Minister Nikola Dimitrov and Deputy Prime Minister for EU affairs Bujar Osmani are in Berlin to plead with German policy makers that Germany puts pressure on France, Denmark and the Netherlands and unlocks Macedonia’s EU accession talks.
Dimitrov and Osmani met Bundestag members and with CDU leader Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, as well as with the social-democratic Foreign Ministry official Michael Roth to state their case.
Osmani acknowledged that there will be little time between the European Commission report published on May 29th and the June summit of the European Council to work with the Parliaments of France and the Netherlands and to get them to approve opening of accession talks. According to Osmani, it is an issue of short deadlines, and not of lack of political will in Paris and the Hague.
Dimitrov also insisted that there are no negative comments from the European capitals over whether Macedonia is deserving to open the accession talks.
A statement by European Commissioner Johannes Hahn that Macedonia will be allowed to enter some kind of a preparatory stage of negotiations and not begin actual accession talks caused panic in the Government. This after last June top Government officials celebrated what they then said is an ironclad guarantee that Macedonia will begin accession talks in June 2019.
Prime Minister Zoran Zaev, who afterwards spoke with Chancellor Merkel to ask her to act on Macedonia’s behalf towards France and the Netherlands, quickly acknowledged that the talks will begin late in 2019, or possibly in early 2020…
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