Bulgaria will stick to conditions for North Macedonia’s EU membership talks

Bulgaria has no intention of changing the negotiation framework and conditions for North Macedonia’s membership in the EU, Olivér Várhelyi, European Commissioner for Neighbourhood and Enlargement, said during his visit to Sofia on Monday.

“I don’t think the member states want to revise the terms,” Várhelyi told the media during his visit to Bulgaria.

In 2022, Bulgaria adopted the so-called French proposal to continue the EU integration of North Macedonia and Albania, agreeing to lift their veto on Skopje’s integration when North Macedonia writes the Bulgarian minority into its constitution.

However, the draft changes to the North Macedonian constitution have been blocked for a year by one of North Macedonia’s two leading parties, VMRO-DPMNE, meaning Skopje cannot begin formal EU membership talks.

The situation has raised the ire of many, including local leaders like Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama who said such “hostage”  situations are unacceptable. Others have called it an abuse of the veto system for key EU decisions and have called for a revision of the rules.

According to the commissioner, progress could happen after the North Macedonian presidential election, planned in May.

“I hope that immediately after the elections, the new government in North Macedonia will take over this work and move forward with the fulfilment of the criteria,” said Várhelyi, quoted by the Bulgarian news agency BGNES.

On Monday, Commissioner Varhélyi met in Sofia with Bulgarian President Rumen Radev, who expressed his expectation that after the end of the pre-election campaign in the Republic of North Macedonia, the EU integration process would begin.

Radev and Várhelyi discussed the prospects for the enlargement process, both in the Western Balkans and Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia.

(Krassen Nikolov | Euractiv.bg)

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