Government–opposition Accusations mark European Affairs Committee session

Tuesday’s session of the Committee on European Affairs was marked by fierce accusations. Though it was organised to debate the developments related to the date for membership negotiations, the session saw huge disagreements between the Government’s representatives and opposition MPs. First, VMRO-DPMNE’s Antonio Milososki described the session as “a parody”, adding that the debate should be held the following day, within the frameworks of the Foreign Policy Committee, chaired by him. The VMRO-DPMNE MP considers that Foreign Minister Nikola Dimitrov and Deputy PM for European Affairs Bujar Osmani should resign over the failure to get a date. “When you have a fake date and a fake celebration, what follows is also fake accountability before the European Affiars Committee, where I expect Parliament’s majority to praise them and applaud the Ministers who are responsible for the failure,” he said. After that, Milososki and the other MPs from his party left the debate. In response, DImitrov said the last unfinished business was the adoption of the Public Prosecutor’s Office law, which, in his view, is being blocked by VMRO-DPMNE. As he added, if he were a VMRO-DPMNE MP, he would be embarrassed to talk about the EU. According to Osmani, Macedonia has deserved a date. He added that there had been injustice and a historic mistake. In regards to the Prespa Agreement, Dimitrov said it couldn’t be fully implemented without Macedonia starting membership negotiations.