site.btaPresident Radev Talks on Phone with French Counterpart Macron

President Rumen Radev held a phone conversation with his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron, the Bulgarian head of State’s press secretariat said Wednesday. The European perspective of the Western Balkan countries, the impact of the military action in Ukraine and the changed security environment featured on the agenda of the talks. 

Radev said that it is in the interest of united Europe’s stability that each EU candidate country upholds the European values related to the rights of its citizens. Bulgaria expects specific results in that respect on the part of the Republic of North Macedonia before Sofia can agree to that country’s start of EU accession negotiations. 

Sofia and Skopje have reached an agreement on the elaboration of a roadmap that would outline short-term and long-term goals the implementation of which would move forward the Republic of North Macedonia’s EU integration process, but no results have been reached in that direction, Radev went on to say. He noted Bulgaria’s expectation of legally binding guarantees to be included in the negotiating framework for the Republic of North Macedonia and to guarantee the implementation of the commitments made by Skopje. 

Radev also said that the non-implementation of the bilateral Treaty of Friendship, Goodneighbourliness and Cooperation on North Macedonia’s part five years after the treaty’s signing requires specific steps and results the implementation of which to restore and strengthen Bulgaria’s trust. 

President Macron expressed France’s readiness to support Bulgaria so that the Bulgarian Air Force does not lose defence capabilities until the arrival of the F-16 fighter jets that Bulgaria purchased from the US.