The list of which embassies abroad will be closed will be defined in the coming weeks. There are currently 27 vacant diplomatic posts. According to an analysis by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, there is a proposal to close at least four embassies, President Stevo Pendarovski said in an interview with TV Sitel.

Pendarovski said talks with relevant ministers and the government are in the final stages, and will complete the list in the coming weeks, and will try to close most of the 27 vacant ambassador posts.

There is an analysis I ordered from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as soon as I assumed the President’s post, to give me a functional analysis of how our diplomatic and consular network works. There is a proposal to close four, the fifth is in question, four embassies at least, where we do not have much reasons to stay with diplomatic presence, Pendarovski said.

The President announced that some of our ambassadors are already on their way home, specifically Ambassador Ivica Bocevski from Brazil, because, as he said “we will go first with reduction so that we can strengthen some other positions that are very important to us at the moment”.

Can you imagine, we have no ambassador to NATO, and we are joining the Alliance in a few months. We have no ambassador to Washington, the country’s largest strategic partner since independence. We don’t have to Moscow and let me not go further. What is fatal for small states is that we have five neighbors, and in four we have no ambassador. We only have one in our five neighbors, which is unacceptable. We have an ambassador only in Sofia, which will be corrected as soon as possible, Pendarovski said.