I am afraid that I have unintentionally and without wanting to become the bad prophet for Hristijan Mickoski, the Prime Minister of the Republic of North Macedonia. And I was not the only one, of course. Last week, in my regular text for “Trud news“ I warned that nothing would come of the idea of the so-called “reverse membership“ in the European Union for North Macedonia, and it turned out to be completely true. On Wednesday, the ambassadors of the member states, at their regular meeting, where the main issues that the European Council must later approve are actually decided, unanimously rejected the European Commission's idea of the so-called membership without voting rights. On March 19, the leaders of the member states must either confirm the decision of their ambassadors, as is usually the case, or break tradition and change it in favor of Ursula von der Leyen and her commissioners. Guess what will happen.
This was commented on for "Trud" by Kostadin Filipov.
Let us recall, although the calendar difference from the previous publication to today is only one week. So, we should have a memory of the story in which the Prime Minister of North Macedonia Hristijan Mickoski, in an interview on the Skopje television "Channel 5", stated that there is a chance that his country will receive some form of membership in the European Union, in which, artistically speaking, the flag of the state will "fly on the table in Brussels", but it will not have the right to vote. Subsequently and over time, everything would fall into place and the criteria would gradually be fulfilled and the reforms - taken into account. Mickoski did not hide that this could be a form of circumventing the European consensus, as we in Bulgaria prefer to call the “French proposal” from July 2022 for North Macedonia's path to full membership in the European family. Regardless of what we call it, however, in essence it represents the Negotiating Framework, the basis of which are the two protocols of the intergovernmental commission between the Republic of Bulgaria and the Republic of North Macedonia with the main requirement that the Bulgarians near the Vardar be registered as part of the Bulgarian people and as a state-building element in the Constitution of North Macedonia. The main conclusion for these hopes, sprinkled by Mickoski from the television screen that we made, was that in this way he continues to play unfairly with his voters, trying to bypass and circumvent the criteria that Brussels sets for Skopje. A typical provincial Balkan charlatan, with which the Prime Minister of North Macedonia, with all his political weight and personal responsibility, was trying to present yet another illusion of easy and quick entry into the European Union, albeit through the back door.
Yes, such an idea is circulating in the corridors of the European Commission and the European Parliament. And it is primarily related to the desire of some of its commissioners, and above all Kaia Kalas and Ursula von der Leyen herself, to respond positively to the publicly expressed insistence of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that his country receive a fast track to EU membership as part of the peace plan for Ukraine. For greater clarity and to explain why, they called this formula “reverse membership”, but they realized that in this way they were insulting those countries from the Western Balkans, such as Albania and Montenegro, which have their own obvious progress in opening and closing the negotiation chapters. A chance in the “reverse membership“ was seen by those candidate countries that, for various reasons, are lagging behind the normal pace of negotiations, such as North Macedonia and Serbia. We are not talking about Kosovo, because five member states of the European Union still refuse to recognize its independence and sovereignty. The same goes for Bosnia and Herzegovina, which, with its specific state structure, a product of the Dayton Peace Agreement of 1995, is struggling to maintain its integrity. Let us also recall that Mickoski dared to fill the public space near the Vardar with this idea at a time when his mentor and role model - Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić, had already spoken positively.
Just to draw attention to one detail - Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama supported Vucic in his insistence on a similar form of Serbia's accession to the EU. Ask this Rama why he doesn't mind his country's work on the reforms that the negotiation process requires, but is concerned about when and how Serbia will sit at the table together with the other member states. So, if there is another way to achieve this goal, why all the efforts and numerous compromises that the government of this same Edi Rama is making in the name of Albania's European future? If you truly want the good of your neighbor, pull yourself forward and in this way give him an example of what to do so that he will follow you. What is this - some unexpected and sudden impulse of extreme sympathy on the part of Albanians for Serbs? Come on, enough, this seems too civilized even for Balkan stereotypes, so deeply rooted in the past that it will take years to come out of them. Unfortunately, I say. It is well known that Rama is an eccentric and does not know the measure of his language, but as a politician he still remains more Albanian than European, I think. Despite the constant pats on the back from outside, that with the reforms he is making in Albania, he has long since surpassed the regional idea of a modernity that is decades late, which is often used to justify Balkan laziness and inertia. In my first years as a correspondent in Skopje, I often heard the phrase that the locals uttered with a great deal of self-irony, that compared to neighboring Albania they are much ahead: but what kind of sovereign and independent state are we, if our West is Albania? That is why they now have a hard time swallowing every successful step that Tirana takes.
The opposition in Skopje immediately reacted and accused Mickoski of yet another delusion that he presented to his fellow citizens and ironically asked him what the new illusion that he would try to sell to his voters would be. The Prime Minister did not give a clear answer, but as his justification he recalled that he had not proposed the idea of "reverse membership" as a sure solution, but had said that it had only been discussed in the corridors of the European institutions. From which it became clear that he had spoken about this possibility of membership for North Macedonia only because it gave him the chance to keep his election promise, according to which while he was Prime Minister he would not allow the Bulgarianization of his country by changing the constitution and including Bulgarians in it. A mantra that he repeats even in a more pointed form over and over again, even in places where such a spell would not work. Good, even the deaf understood what you meant! But at least listen to Thomas Weitz, who last year in his report on the progress of North Macedonia, he wished he had included the phrase about the centuries-old Macedonian identity. He had included it, but then it became one... Well, this same Weitz explicitly says in his report to the European Parliament this year that the negotiating framework for North Macedonia's path to EU membership cannot be renegotiated and that the condition for including the Bulgarian community in the country's basic law is without alternative. What could be clearer than that?
So, what is Mickoski going to come up with? What does he need right now? The easiest thing - some anti-Bulgarian straw to grab onto and follow the sad tradition of seeking justification for every failure through accusations against Bulgaria. The chance comes by itself - this is the ten-year ban on entering our country for the lawyer from Skopje, Toni Menkinovski, which the Bulgarian authorities have imposed on him since March 6 of this year. He is the lawyer who is handling the cases of the OMO “Ilinden” and its members in the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg and wins them, giving a trump card to Mickoski at every opportunity to mention that Bulgaria violates the rights of Macedonians in Bulgaria and that the proof of this is the fourteen verdicts against our state. Let's hope that our authorities have well assessed the motives and arguments for such a ban and that, as many people in Skopje believe, they have something in their hands that goes beyond the usual legal practice of Menkinovski.
We'll see.