site.btaSkopje's Constitutional Court Asked to Void Protocol of Second Meeting of Joint Commission with Bulgaria

The Constitutional Court of the Republic of North Macedonia has instituted a case to determine the constitutionality and legality of the Protocol of the Second Meeting of the Joint Intergovernmental Commission with Bulgaria, the Court announced on its website on Wednesday.

The protocol was signed in Sofia on July 17, 2022, by then foreign ministers Teodora Genchovska of Bulgaria and Bujar Osmani of North Macedonia. Under Article 12 of the Treaty of Friendship, Good-neighbourliness and Cooperation between the two countries, the Joint Intergovernmental Commission holds regular meetings once a year to review the Treaty's implementation, adopt measures to improve bilateral cooperation, and address any issues that may have arisen during the implementation of the treaty.

The case was initiated at the request of Liljana Popovska, former MP and former president of the Democratic Renewal of Macedonia Party. Popovska calls for a review of the Protocol's constitutionality and legality.

The submitter of the initiative argues that the Protocol violates provisions of the Constitution and of the Law on the Conclusion, Ratification and Implementation of International Agreements, as it it was not ratified by Parliament and was not published in the Official Gazette of the Republic of North Macedonia within the constitutional deadline. Popovska also claims that the document has an inappropriate form and content, that it goes beyond the scope of a legal act, and that it produces "harmful effects on identity-related issues for the Macedonian people, language, and state," the Constitutional Court said. 

The submitter requests the Protocol to be voided and states that this is justified under the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, which allows voidance in cases where a treaty conflicts with a peremptory norm of general international law, which, in her opinion, is the case with the Protocol concerned.

Popovska states that the Protocol is not a fully valid act confirmed by Parliament but remains only as a record of a meeting of the Intergovernmental Commission. She claims that, unlike the procedure conducted in the Republic of North Macedonia, which she assesses as non-transparent and flawed, the Bulgarian parliamentary committee debated the text of the Protocol as early as June 23, 2022, one month before the two countries' foreign ministers signed it, and then, at a sitting on June 24, 2022, adopted the entire French proposal package for the start of negotiations with North Macedonia.

The French proposal in question was made by the French EU presidency in 2022, which aimed at overcoming a series of tensions between Sofia and Skopje over language, history, and the rights of ethnic Bulgarians in North Macedonia. Without making a specific mention of a "Bulgarian minority", the proposal obliged the government of North Macedonia to protect the rights of all "minorities and communities" by preventing hate speech and discrimination and to respect the 2017 Friendship Treaty with Bulgaria.

Under the Bulgarian National Assembly resolution of June 24, 2022, the signing of the Protocol was a precondition for Bulgaria to approve North Macedonia’s EU Negotiating Framework. Once its Parliament endorsed the deal, Bulgaria lifted its veto blocking Macedonian talks on joining the European Union.

The Protocol of the Second Meeting of the Joint Intergovernmental Commission states that the Government of the Republic of North Macedonia agrees that the next Intergovernmental Conference with the EU on closing the opening phase of the negotiations on North Macedonia's EU membership will take place after amendments to the country's Constitution enter into force. These amendments were supposed to include in the Constitution recognition of citizens who live on the territory of North Macedonia and are part of other peoples, such as the Bulgarian people.