site.btaUPDATED MEP Kyuchyuk Finds It "Reasonable to Adopt North Macedonia Progress Report When Horizon for Constitutional Changes There Is Clear"

Ilhan Kyuchyuk, MEP and rapporteur on North Macedonia's progress towards EU accession, told BTA it is a practice in the European Parliament when important processes are about to take place in a certain country - elections, referendums, important constitutional decisions, as is the case with the Republic of North Macedonia, not to send missions or write reports in order not to influence the internal processes in the country. He was explaining his request to the EP Committee on Foreign Affairs to postpone the adoption of the progress report on North Macedonia.

Asked why it was a priori assumed that the report would have a bad impact on the processes in the country, Kyuchyuk referred to the Bulgarian experience.

Kyuchyuk noted that every report is subject to interpretation. He said that the ruling parties say that the report is good and back their opinion with the progress indicated in parts of it, while the opposition says that "this is the worst report". He stressed that a wide range of topics are present in such a document, and that the report on North Macedonia is not just about bilateral relations. Currently, the adoption of constitutional amendments to include Bulgarians and communities in the basic law is an extremely sensitive topic in North Macedonia, he said. According to Kyuchyuk, it is better to adopt the progress report when the horizon for the country becomes clearer.

Kyuchyuk was in Skopje, where he met with parliament speaker Talat Xhaferi, with the chairman of the ruling Social Democratic Union of Macedonia (SDUM) party and Prime Minister Dimitar Kovachevski, with Hristijan Mickoski - the leader of the main opposition party VMRO-DPMNE, who opposes the constitutional changes and insists they come into force after the end of the country's negotiations with the EU, and with Artan Grubi - deputy chairman of the largest Albanian party Social Democratic Union (SDU), which is a coalition partner of SDUM.

Moving forward with the procedure for the changes to the country's constitution and human rights, which are included in the negotiating framework of North Macedonia, were in the focus of the talks. According to Kyuchyuk, in addition to institutional ones, North Macedonia could also establish political mechanisms to monitor human rights in the country and include representatives of the Bulgarian community in institutions that are committed to them, such as the Commission for Prevention and Protection against Discrimination, the institution of the ombudsman, as well as in the Ministry for the Political System and Community Relations in the country. 

The proposed texts for constitutional amendments in North Macedonia have not yet been adopted at a government meeting to enter Parliament. After a leadership meeting on June 7, the ruling SDUM proposed to the opposition to send representatives to a working group to clarify the details of the proposals discussed by Kovachevski and Mickoski in order to reach a change of the basic law according to the country's negotiating framework. After the leadership meeting, Mickoski said he accepted Kovachevski's proposal to enter the government if the Albanian SDU was not present, and that the constitutional changes would enter into force with delayed effect once North Macedonia completes negotiations with the EU.