site.btaVazrazhdane Urges European Parliament to Adjourn Vote on North Macedonia's EU Accession Report

Even if the Foreign Affairs Committee adopts the enlargement report on North Macedonia on Wednesday, it must not be put to the vote at the European Parliament, which is scheduled for early July, Vazrazhdane leader Kostadin Kostadinov told a news conference here on Tuesday. 

He argued that the vote on this report at the European Parliament must be adjourned because "this report is, to put it mildly, outrageous." Kostadinov explained that Vazrazhdane MEP Stanislav Stoyanov, who is a shadow rapporteur for the Europe of Sovereign Nations Group (ESN) but was not admitted to the final debate of the report. The Vazrazhdane leader said that the ESN group will not second this report, and this is clear.

Kostadinov argued that North Macedonia tactically insists that it has a bilateral issue with Bulgaria and their lobbyists at the European Parliament claim that this bilateral issue should not be seen as an obstacle to the Skopje-Brussels negotiation process. The Vazrazhdane leader recalled that in 2022 the Bulgarian Parliament passed a resolution approving the so-called French compromise, but that resolution turned the bilateral dispute between the two countries into a dispute between North Macedonia and the EU.

He was referring to a proposal from the outgoing French EU presidency in 2022, 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 Macedonian government to protect the rights of all "minorities and communities" by preventing hate speech and discrimination and to respect the 2017 Friendship Treaty with Bulgaria. Once its Parliament endorsed the deal, Bulgaria lifted its veto blocking Macedonian talks on joining the European Union. 

In Kostadinov's opinion, under the circumstances North Macedonia acts as if it were a EU Member State whereas Bulgaria is treated as a candidate country and comes under pressure. He said that the report does not mention anything about the repressions against Bulgarians in North Macedonia and described the report as "a mockery of Bulgaria".

The Vazrazhdane leader specified that his party insists on an adjournment of the adoption of the report and not on its scrapping altogether. He specified that the Vazrazhdane MEPs have already requested such an adjournment by a letter to European Parliament President Roberta Metsola. Kostadinov believes that Bulgarian Prime Minister Rosen Zhelyazkov, too, should join the insistence on an adjournment.