On Tuesday, not only will the negotiations begin and there will be a conference, the screening will also begin on the same day in the afternoon, Foreign Affairs Minister Bujar Osmani said at the press conference after returning from Sofia, where he and his Bulgarian colleague Teodora Genchovska signed the bilateral protocol.

On Tuesday, EU experts will enter our institutions, starting Tuesday the days until membership start to be counted, said Osmani.

He added that after the Bulgarian veto 3 years ago, we could not get everything, but, as he pointed out, we got 3 important positions.

We got clear language, that historical issues should not be a condition in the negotiations and that they should start immediately, and Bulgaria got to hold a second conference after constitutional changes are made,  Osmani pointed out.

According to him, it will be much easier to solve the misunderstandings with Sofia while we are part of the process in the EU, than to stay outside and wait for some better times.

Reciprocity is the principle included in the protocol, signed Sunday in Sofia by Macedonia’s Foreign Minister Bujar Osmani and his Bulgarian counterpart Teodora Genchovska. Legally speaking, the document is in fact a written record of a meeting outlining the results achieved from the dialogue and inter-sectoral cooperation between 2019 and 2022. Since the intergovernmental commission hadn’t been convened since 2019 after the Bulgarian veto, the document signed today contains a three-year period. This document should be in fact signed once a year.