1 After it became even more certain that Albania will continue its negotiations with the European Union without waiting for Macedonia to include Bulgarians in the Constitution, Prime Minister Hristijan Mickoski repeated once again: “If this is the condition, then I have already said it in Brussels – No, thank you.”
Okay. That’s completely understandable. But now what? If it’s a “No thanks” situation, does our Prime Minister have a plan? If it’s a no to the EU, then is there a plan about who he’ll partner with? If he does partner with someone, is there a plan about how that partnership will work? If we choose self-isolation, what’s the plan for progressing while isolated?
It’s great he got to say that in Brussels. He suggested that we would include Bulgarians in our Constitution, but that this should apply when we actually join the EU. And he’ll probably keep saying the same thing.
But let’s be clear, the key point isn’t about what he has to say to them. The key point is what they said to him. And the way EU responded to his plan was by saying: We are separating Albania, and it will continue the negotiations on its own.
Yes, it’s true that no one else has been forced to change their Constitution 36 times like we have, to change the flag and to change the name of the country. No one disputes that. But honestly, why should I, as a citizen, feel good about the Prime Minister telling me that Europe is bullying us? I’ve felt that way for 33 years after all.
We can throw a fit and whine that the EU isn’t being fair. The EU doesn’t buy into tears. It never has. So, Mickoski can cry all he wants, but crying doesn’t play well even at home. Except, maybe among his loyal voters, but sooner or later, they too will start asking: What next? What’s the point? This is starting to feel like masochism. Come on leader, give us a plan. Say something new. And get down to work.
Mickoski isn’t saying whether he has a plan, but Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban definitely does, as he mentioned in Ohrid.
Where the money is, that’s where the plans are. A 500 million loan from Hungary – there’s your plan.
2 Nothing good will come from this. Does the EU expect to shake us up so we’d come to our senses, and make us realise: Oh, since Albania is moving forward, let’s just include Bulgarians in our Constitution first thing tomorrow? Euroscepticism is only going to get stronger. And it will give Mickoski an alibi to keep pushing his agenda with Orban’s money.
We’ll go back to 2008, when after Greece vetoed our NATO membership, Gruevski started capturing his country in the most brutal way and getting rich. If you’re not accepting us into the EU, you have no right to tell us how to run our country.
What happened to us after the NATO veto is going to happen again after the EU veto. We saw how that turned out for the country. With the same party in power.
3 And SDSM is just poking fun. Instead of saying, wait, let’s find a solution together, since we already messed up by not consulting anyone when we accepted the French proposal, they now dare spread hysteria that the country will fall apart.
Everything they’re saying now is totally irrelevant. It’s their incompetence and arrogance that got us into this mess in the first place. They accepted a contract they couldn’t enforce. They kept insisting until the very end that they had a majority in Parliament to change the Constitution. They blindly clung to the idea that America would do their job alongside Macron and Scholz. They couldn’t even convince their own members, let alone anyone else, that they had secured a good negotiating framework.
Mickoski, as the opposition leader, refused to cooperate with SDSM on pretty much everything. Meanwhile, SDSM, whether Zoran Zaev or even more so with Dimitar Kovachevski, failed to find a way to engage in dialogue with the opposition. And so, acting out of spite for each other, they let DUI take charge of defining what Macedonian state interests are.
Which team was Mickoski counting on when he promised to secure a better negotiating framework with the EU? What foreign friends did he have in mind? What was he thinking when, right after winning the elections, he clashed with Greece right off the bat, and turned the European sister parties of VMRO-DPMNE against him?
Now that Orban mentioned that he proposed a plan to Mickoski, I’m really curious to see if our prime minister will share that plan with his coalition partners and the opposition? Will he also consult Venko Filipche? To be completely frank, I’m not sure if Filipche would accept to be consulted about Orban’s plan.
Which domestic political elite do we expect to solve our problems? The Speaker of the Albanian Parliament comes and gives our Speaker tasks, acting like she’s his mentor for postgraduate studies. Which kind of leadership and which unity will drive this country forward? For instance, moving forward on our European path, if that’s even our path, since it’s clear that they can’t agree on that either. They can’t define what our state interests are.
It’s really depressing to be asking myself this question after 33 years.
But when something bad keeps repeating, I can’t help but think the next time won’t be any better.
Translated by Nikola Gjelincheski
