VMRO-DPMNE’s Vice President Aleksandar Nikoloski was first to warn that Macedonia will not get a date for starting accession negotiations with the EU in 2019.

In his column for “Nezavisen vesnik” entitled “With Zaev and Dimitrov, the EU is just a distant dream”,  he said he announced in November last year that if Macedonia does not deliver in the reforms field, it will not get a date for starting accession negotiations with the EU.

Here I would like to remind you that I was the first of the Macedonian politicians who announced in November last year that if Macedonia does not deliver in the reforms field, it will not get a date for starting accession negotiations with the EU in 2019, just as it did not get a date in the 2018, although Zaev and Dimitrov signed to change the name of Macedonia. At that time, on these same pages in Nezavisen Vesnik in my column entitled “Dark Scenarios” I wrote: “I want to publicly warn through these lines that if Macedonia continues with this low level of implemented reforms, unfortunately, in June next year will not get a date for starting negotiations for EU membership.

 

Regardless of the name change, the low level of reform implementation is currently the main brake for Macedonia to move towards the EU.” In the same column of November 21, I added that “I want you to keep in mind for the record that I warned seven months earlier that if Macedonia continues with a low level of reform, although with a changed name in the North Republic of Macedonia, humiliated and on its knees, it will not get a start date to negotiate in June 2019. I will be happiest if the government and Zaev prove me wrong with their work, but this has not happened. It will be good for Macedonia. But as things stand now – highly unlikely!, Nikoloski wrote in his column for Nezavisen.