Prime Minister Zoran Zaev said he is certain that the European Union member states will approve the opening of the EU accession talks with Macedonia next week despite French reservations. He assured the skeptical states that Macedonia will not become a member immediately, but only wants to be allowed to begin the process.

We expect to make the next step, to open the accession talks, the chapters and the accession funds so we can continue to transform our society toward a European society. I believe in President Macron. It is legitimate to open a debate about reforming the EU, the EU needs to change and to remain a world leader in the realm of democracy, competitiveness and values, but that must go hand in hand with enlargement, Zaev said.

Zaev insisted that with the imposed name change, Macedonai did more than all the other candidate countries.

When asked whether failure to open the accession talks would mean early general elections, Zaev demurred.

We are not considering that because I don’t think we would get a negative decision. And even if the decision is negative, we should not go to early elections, because the time until the regular elections is prescious and needs to be used for economic transformation, Zaev said.