SkopjeDiem Macedonia in English
After the Hungary-North Macedonia Inter-Governmental session in Ohrid on Friday, Hungarian PM Viktor Orban said Skopje had to start EU talks by the end of the year.
He added that he’d proposed to his counterpart, Hristijan Mickoski, for his country, in the capacity of holder of the EU Presidency, to serve as a mediator in the Skopje-Sofia process.
Regarding the decoupling decision, Mickoski said citizens shouldn’t be disappointed and lose hope. However, he didn’t say whether he accepted Orban’s proposal.
Mickoski regrets that his country “has to again be a victim of bialteralisation” instead of the Copenhagen criteria being used.
“However, we will continue to work hard and to be solving problems that are accumulated domestically and that are many,” North Macedonia’s PM stressed.
Wishing Albania success, he added that he hoped that Skopje, too, would one day be part of the EU. In his view, Bulgaria and the opposition in North Macedonia are the only ones satisfied with the decoupling decision.
Orban believes the decoupling decision to be a mistake. Asked whether the 500-million-euro loan was actually Chinese money, Orban said that was not the case because Budapest and Beijing had a deal according to which all money coming from China were used for concrete development projects in Hungary.
