SkopjeDiem Macedonia in English
Presidents Pendarovski and Macron agreed at their Paris meeting on Tuesday that there is no alternative for full-fledged membership for Macedonia. President Pendarovski presented his agreements before Macron and listened to the ones by his colleague. According to Pendarovski, Paris has already prepared a non-paper which lays down the skeleton of the new methodology and the document has been sent to all member countries. Now they are waiting for a response, but even if everything goes as planned, there is still no guarantees for positive decision for accession start at the Zagreb Summit. “All options are open and Macron stated at the meeting that the delay happens because EU needs more time. He told me ‘an old endeavour of mine is furthering the EU and changing the methodology, I know they can go in parallel, you only want opening now and that is clear to me’,” Macron told President Pendarovski and during the conversation not at any moment has he mentioned further reforms of the PPO law as precondition for opening the negotiations. “It was precisely told to me that his intention was never to give us an alternative to the full-fledged membership, but only wants to better the process, and not only produce bureaucratic successes, which are in fact failures,” added Pendarovski. At the end of the meeting, President Emanuel Macron announced visit to Macedonia in the first half of 2020. At the margins of the Paris Peace Forum, President Pendarovski also met with Sergey Lavrov, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation and Brigitte Bierlein, Austrian Chancellor. Serbian President, Aleksandar Vucic, after the Pendarovski-Macron meeting stated that there is no doubt that Macedonia will receive accession date inside 5 months, and that EU’s reservation is on account of the April election and its outcome.
