In Skopje, elections in neighbouring Bulgaria are expected to lift the country’s veto power at the beginning of negotiations for North Macedonia’s accession to the European Union before the end of the year. This briefing is an educated guess as to whether this extremely favorable scenario for the turbulent Western Balkans will be realized.
Bulgarians voted for a new parliament and president on November 14. In the presidential election on November 21, they re-elected Rumen Radev as the head of state.
The parliament has been formed, but negotiations to form a government continue. If all goes well, Bulgaria will have a coalition government made up of four parties.
They are “change is still going on”, a new centrist party close to Radev, the Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP), the center-right “Democratic Bulgaria” and the anti-establishment faction of Slavie Trifonov “have such people”.
In North Macedonia, there is a strong interest in the Bulgarian elections. Bulgaria’s veto power came into effect under the government of Boyko Borissov, in which the nationalist VMRO is the primary partner of the coalition. Now VMRO is not only excluded from power, but also has not crossed the 4% barrier to enter the parliament (they won a meager 1.07%).
In addition, the “continuation of change” of the new cabinet’s leading party seems to be centered on Two Harvard-trained businessmen, Its main ideology seems to be pragmatism.
In addition, foreign pressure from the United States and EU countries forced Bulgaria to lift its veto power.
According to authoritative sources, France, which will assume the rotating presidency of the European Council on January 1, hopes that this issue will be resolved by December 31 at the latest. In other words, before he became president. The appropriate place and time should be the EU summit on December 16-17.
There is a strong assumption that a government will be established in Sofia by then, and Kirill Petkov Will attend the EU summit as prime minister for the first time. If no government is established by then, President Radev will represent the country at the summit.
But this does not mean that Bulgaria will withdraw its veto power.
What people in Brussels sometimes cannot understand is that Bulgaria has a very strong consensus on North Macedonia, cross-party and cross-party issues.
Let us imagine that “change continues” does want to remove the veto for pragmatic reasons (unlikely at this stage). It would be suicidal: its alliance partners would yell, and the government would collapse.
Therefore, before Skopje completely changes its attitude towards Bulgaria, it is unlikely that the veto will be lifted.
This includes ending the repression of North Macedonians with Bulgarian citizenship, negative narratives about Bulgaria in textbooks and public speeches, and destroying Bulgarian monuments or transforming them into Macedonians.
So far, the Skopje authorities (in their own complex election phase) have not shown a real desire to solve these problems. Whether Zoran Zaev’s SDSM or nationalist VMRO-DPMNE is in power is not important, as both rely on foreign pressure on Bulgaria rather than responding to Sofia’s concerns.
But this pressure is caused by a slightly hypocritical cause. France does want to solve this problem now, but the motive of France is that they do not want to bring to the EU presidency a problem that may be used to attack Emmanuel Macron in the presidential election from April to May.
Let us not forget that France is not keen on further enlargement of the EU, and Macron supports the last vote that put North Macedonia on holdIn theory, if all goes well, if Skopje plays, Bulgaria can lift the veto during the French presidency. But France does not want to be associated with such “success”…
When the committee does not know how to solve the problem, it usually proposes a toolbox. But this time, it hasn’t even gone that far.
As part of the negotiation process, the EU executive agency can ensure that Skopje maintains good-neighborly relations with Bulgaria. But no, it would rather wait for an unlikely change in Bulgaria’s position after the election.
We believe that this problem is not impossible to solve, but the current strategies of Skopje and Brussels are just futile.
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Pay close attention, watch out, watch out…
- The General Committee meets to prepare for the European Council to be held from December 16th to 17th.
- Ursula von der Leyen, chairman of the committee, participated in the plenary debate of the European Parliament.
- Crisis Management Commissioner Janez Lenarčič visited Greece to participate in the EU Forest Fire Civil Defense Seminar.
The opinions are those of the author.
[Edited by Zoran Radosavljevic/Alice Taylor]
