Professor Gordana Siljanovska – Davkova, who is the VMRO-DPMNE presidential candidate, said that failure to uphold EU criteria and standards is a greater problem for Macedonia’s EU accession process, than the Bulgarian request for constitutional amendments. Siljanovska opposes the Bulgarian request for changes that would give greater power to the Bulgarian minority in Macedonia, without any reciprocal steps on their part.

We can join the EU by being compatible, and not by glorifying it. We turn EU into a dogma. Instead we should change the way things are at home, we need to implement European standards, and that is how we will be viewed better by the EU, Siljanovska said, reminding the public of the numerous false announcements from the DUI – SDSM Government that Macedonia has already begun the EU accession talks.

SDSM and DUI now insist that we must accept the Bulgarian demands before the accession talks can begin, and refuse any attempt to negotiate with Bulgaria or the EU. They also refuse to raise reciprocal requests, such as on the failure of the Bulgarian state to implement verdicts from the European Court of Human Rights that it must allow the opening of Macedonian cultural centers.

When I say that we need to talk with our neighbors, I mean we need to do so based on our arguments. Our neighbors claim that they uphold European values. Is it a European value to reject the verdicts from Strasbourg? What kind of a country has a judge sitting in the court in Strasbourg, but refuses to implement its verdicts?, Siljanovska said during her Telma TV interview.