EU Commissioner for Neighbourhood Policy and Enlargement Negotiations Olivér Várhelyi told Tuesday’s press conference that he will discuss with the Macedonia’s authorities on ensuring sufficient time for campaigning and freedom of elections, MIA’s Brussels correspondent reported.

I have seen the announcement of the government their intent to hold elections early July and I need to look into the details and at this stage what I can tell you is that free and fair elections would have to be hold with sufficient time for campaigning and sufficient possibilities for all political parties to campaign. We need to also look into how under the COVID-19 regimes this can be implemented. So, this is something that we will take up with the Macedonia’s authorities for sure, because it is very important to ensure fully fairness and freedom of elections, Várhelyi said.

Várhelyi said that the negotiating frameworks for Macedonia and Albania will be published in “a couple of days” and that the European Commission’s goal is to get negotiating frameworks on the table of the Council of the European Union hopefully next week.

He announced that the European Commission’s enlargement package has been postponed until autumn.