Hungary has a plan that will help resolve the dispute between Macedonia and Bulgaria, and will hopefully allow Macedonia to open its EU accession talks. This was announced by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, during his joint press conference with Macedonian Prime Minister Hristijan Mickoski in Ohrid yesterday.

It is possible that Macedonia moves forward if it reaches some agreement with Bulgaria. I have my proposal and I delivered it to the Prime Minister. It is up to the countries to decide whther they are ready to accept Hungary as an intermediary, but we are ready, we want to work and find a solution that will fit both Macedonia and bulgaira, Orban said during the press conference.

He reminded the public that “Macedonia has been an EU candidate since 2005, and was given a positive opinion in 2008, together with Croatia. Croatia is already in the EU and Macedonia has not yet begun its accession talks. This is an enormous error on the part of the EU, I would characterize it as a historic error, and now we are about to double it, because Macedonia is placed behind Albania. I see no reason for that”, Orban said.

The EU is preparing to open accession talks with Albania in October. In past years, before the Bulgarian veto, Albania insisted that it is kept in a group with Macedonia, so that Macedonia can’t open accession talks without her, and this was generally accepted. Now that the roles are reversed, Albania has secured “decoupling” for herself.

The Hungarian Prime Minister acknowledged the importance of preserving national pride for the Macedonians, which, he said, was humiliated over the past 10 years.

There is now a conflict with Bulgaria that is blocking the process of their EU association because of disputes over the position of national minorities. Hungary, as current head of the EU presidency, believes that it is our task to visit the countries who are having the hardest position in EU enlargement and to help them resolve existing conflicts. That is one of the reasons why I’m here. But there is a more important reason, we have other issues of importance, and that is the issue of migration, Orban told Radio Koshut in an interview done in Ohrid.

The Hungarian Prime Minister said that the stability of the Balkans and its integration into the European Union are exceptionally important. “We all saw the benefits of the enlargement, but the EU lost its dynamism. We must ensure further enlargement. I will not avoid the fact that Ukraine and Moldova were given extraordinary push on the road to the EU. We must respect the countries that have been working on this issue for a long time, and which are now placed in the background. That is not fair. We believe it is important to maintain the association of the Western Balkans toward the EU and in accordance with that we would want to speed up the accession process for Macedonia. We are prepared to hold the second inter-governmental conference, said Prime Minister Orban.