French Ambassador to Macedonia Christian Thimonier expressed concern about the leaked tapes that reveal allegations of corruption in the Zaev Government. The recordings of Zaev’s Secretary General Dragi Raskovski raise suspicion tha tthe influenced the awarding of a contract to purchase air traffic control equipment for the M-NAV agency from the Italian Leonardo company, which beat out offers from a Spanish and a French company.

Regarding the Secretary General I will say that it is necessary to have transparency in the economics, especially when public procurement is involved. But certainly this way of doing things, with the publication of such “bombs”, of wiretapped conversations as a regulator of the political life raises a number of questions about your compatibility with the European system. I say that simply by giving you a date to open EU accession talks will not alter all this. This is why we expect to see evidence here, because we are talking about the entire society, Thimonier said during an interview with Radio Free Europe in Macedonian.

Raskovski refused to resign over the allegations, and over the racist language he used in the recordings against Italians, Roma and “sub-equatorial nations”. The opposition VMRO-DPMNE party demands that state prosecutors investigete him.

France is the main opponent of opening accession talks with Macedonia, citing the need to first deepen the integration of existing EU member states and establish a way of decision making it the EU as it is now.