The 27 member countries of the European Union gave their agreement on Monday to the opening of negotiations to integrate Albania and North Macedonia, the day after the signing of a protocol between Skopje and Sofia that lifts the last obstacles.
The EU27 have just “given their consent to the opening of accession negotiations with Albania and North Macedonia!” Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala, whose country holds the rotating EU presidency, tweeted.
“We have taken another important step to bring the Western Balkans closer to the EU,” he added, after a meeting on this issue in Brussels.
Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama and his North Macedonian counterpart Dimitar Kovacevski are expected to appear in Brussels on Tuesday to formally open these years-long negotiations.
The start of the negotiations is possible thanks to the signing on Sunday by Bulgaria and North Macedonia of a bilateral protocol, initiated by France, which held the rotating presidency of the EU in the first half of the year.
Macedonia-EU negotiations blocked so far by Bulgaria
The protocol will, among other things, allow Macedonian to become one of the official languages of the EU. Bulgaria was blocking the opening of negotiations until recently due to a dispute between the two countries over a long list of historical and linguistic issues.
North Macedonia had achieved EU candidate status almost twenty years ago, and has already had to overcome major differences with Greece to join NATO in March 2020.
The Bulgarian position also prevented the candidacy of Albania, a candidate since 2014.
Under pressure from France, the Bulgarian parliament agreed last month to lift its veto in exchange for guarantees that North Macedonia would meet certain demands on the points in dispute.
An enlargement of the EU desired by Brussels
The language issue remains very sensitive in North Macedonia, since Bulgaria considers the Macedonian language as a Bulgarian dialect, while the two countries dispute historical events and figures, mainly inherited from the Ottoman past.
North Macedonia has pledged to change its constitution to include Bulgarians among recognized ethnic groups and to implement a 2017 friendship treaty aimed at eradicating hate speech.
The nationalist right wing of the VMRO-DPMNE is furious and has denounced the compromise in recent days and called Dimitar Kovacevski a “traitor”.
Brussels insists on the enlargement of the EU in the Balkans, having increased the strategic importance of the region in the context of the war in Ukraine.
Source: BFM TV
