Zaharieva: I would very much like my colleagues in Skopje to have and take their responsibility

Our focus in this period and in the framework of regional cooperation, the Berlin Process and in the framework of bilateral relations is to continue to respect the Agreement and the instruments of the Agreement, which clearly stipulate that history will be left to historians, academics and they should find mutual points that will unite us, to ensure the future of all citizens, said Foreign Minister Bujar Osmani at today’s joint press conference with his counterparts from Bulgaria, Ekaterina Zaharieva and Germany, Heiko Maas.

Answering a reporter’s question whether if Sofia blocks Macedonia’s EU road, will be able to bear the responsibility, Bulgarian Foreign Minister Zaharieva said that she was surprised by what seems as something new.

Yes, we will take our responsibility, we are used to taking responsibility, but I would very much like my colleagues in Skopje to have and take their responsibility, because we have a German presidency at the moment and Germany is one of the founding countries, and not many support enlargement especially for the Western Balkan countries, Zaharieva said.

According to Osmani, the rights arising from self-determination are sovereign rights of the states and are not issues that are regulated in bilateral relations because the states themselves decide what the internal establishment will be and what their identity attributes will be. He emphasized that we should stick to the framework and instruments of the Good Neighborly Agreement, which determined the formation of a commission in order to find common ground for marking historical events and personalities.

We strongly believe that the negotiation process is not just a purely bureaucratic process, but a process guided by the universal values and principles of the EU, and they are the shared future, at the expense of the shared past, and therefore I think that if these principles did not exist in the EU, the EU would not exist today, Osmani said, answering a reporter’s question whether there is a way for the two countries to reach an agreement.