Albania’s EU Path Decoupled from North Macedonia’s

Albania’s EU accession path has been decoupled from North Macedonia’s, with the first clusters of negotiation set to be formally opened on 15 October, according to a decision of Ambassadors of EU members made on Wednesday.

The European Commission’s stand is that for North Macedonia to progress, it is first required to make the constitutional changes to include Bulgarians in the Constitution.

“Our position is very clear. The Commission looks forward to the start of negotiations on the Fundamentals cluster, as soon as possible, with Albania and with North Macedonia, as soon as possible, once North Macedonia has met the relevant criteria that have been agreed by the Council,” Spokesperson Ana Pisonero stated.

PM Mickoski said the decision was a bad message to citizens of his country, stressing again it was about a dictate. Also, he revealed he’d been informed about it during his recent visit to Brussels.

On the EU path, North Macedonia has made a lot of concessions that nobody else did, according to Mickoski, who added that those concessions were not related to the Copenhagen criteria.

“We’re the only case in which bilateral agreements are conditions in a negotiating framework,” the PM stressed, underlining that he shared the impression of the huge majority of citizens that the country should no longer accept conditions on the basis of national concessions without guarantees.

According to Mickoski, considering the decoupling, there may be attempts to destabilise the country.

“However, institutions will react properly,” he noted.

SDSM leader Venko Filipce stated that the decoupling decision was a major defeat of the new government’s policies.

“However, it’s primarily a huge disaster for the future of citizens,” he noted.

The opposition leader believes that the “greatest tragedy is that VMRO-DPMNE actually wants repeat bilateralisation of EU negotiations and the dispute with Bulgaria”, as well as that the country will not lose anything and in fact benefit from the constitutional changes.

DUI called on all sides to make, as it said, the interests of the country and its citizens a priority, as well as to act in accordance with EU ambitions.