site.btaEU Commissioner Kubilius: Blocking Enlargement Talks over Bilateral Issues Is Unacceptable and Unfair

The European Commissioner for Defence and Space, Andrius Kubilius, Monday said it is totally unacceptable for EU Member States to try to resolve historical issues by blocking negotiations with candidate countries. He addressed a joint meeting in Brussels of the European Parliament's Delegation for Relations with the NATO Parliamentary Assembly and the Alliance's Parliamentary Assembly.

Kubilius was answering a question put by Dragan Kovachki, a representative of the Republic of North Macedonia, about Sofia-Skopje relations and the European Parliament's resolution on the report on North Macedonia's progress towards EU membership adopted on July 9.

The EU Commissioner said that when he was an MEP, he participated in the drafting of a new enlargement strategy. It said all of the enlargement should be completed before 2030, which he still considers realistic. He also suggested that such issues should be resolved in a different way, not by blocking negotiations. Unfortunately, this is still the case, which is unfair to the candidate countries, he said.

"All of us, especially in Central and Eastern Europe, were going through terrible times in the 20th century, minorities are now in different places. This has left a lot of scars and emotions," said Kubilius.

Background

On June 24, the EP Committee on Foreign Affairs (AFET) adopted its draft report on the progress of the Republic of North Macedonia to the EU. That version of the report included amendments according to which the EP recognizes a distinct "Macedonian language and identity".

On July 9, references to language and identity in the European Parliament's resolution on the report on Skopje's progress towards EU accession were removed as agreed by the three largest political groups in the European Parliament earlier in July: the European People's Party (EPP), the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats (S&D) and Renew Europe.

Also on July 9, Bulgaria's Foreign Ministry said it acknowledges the resolution adopted by a substantial majority in the European Parliament, which keeps the institution from getting involved in attempts at political instrumentalization by the Republic of North Macedonia, aimed at circumventing the commitments arising from what is known as the European compromise of 2022. In the context of EU enlargement, issues related to identity and language should be addressed within the framework of scholarly and academic discourse, as by their nature, they do not fall within the scope of the institutional assessment of candidate countries' progress based on objective and measurable accession criteria, the Foreign Ministry said.

The European compromise is a reference to a proposal by the then 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 North Macedonia's 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 EU-North Macedonia accession talks.