1 Prime Minister Hristijan Mickoski told the President of the European Council, António Costa: “I can’t stand in front of the citizens and tell them that the Constitution will be amended while Bulgaria refuses to implement the rulings of the European Court. Once we have a clear position from the EU and all its members regarding our identity and language, we’ll discuss everything.”
Brilliant stuff.
Costa listened to Mickoski, said he understood we’re frustrated because we changed our flag and our name and then flew off to Tirana, where he stated that “If Albania continues to deliver at the same rate, it’s quite possible that it will join the EU before 2030.”
We’re about to mark one year since VMRO-DPMNE and VREDI came to power. No one’s denying that SDSM and DUI played a major role in getting us into this mess. The French proposal is bad, but, let’s be honest, Mickoski’s “robust diplomacy” hasn’t managed to change the EU’s Negotiating Framework. A year in, and Mickoski’s daily whining about us being held hostage and treated unfairly by the EU have failed to persuade EU member states not to side with Bulgaria.
And the fact that Costa says that “further efforts to progress towards accession must be guided by fundamental principles: consistency and trust” is just the usual diplomatic fluff that hardly anyone here takes seriously anymore. We expect Bulgaria will continue harassing us by abusing the power of the EU, and we also know that the EU will remain consistent by backing Bulgaria when it does harass us.
Unfortunately, that’s the reality. And yes, it’s not fair. But, in contrast to all the complaints back home that international politics isn’t fair, just remember just one word: Gaza.
At the end of the day, the changes we were forced to make weren’t for nothing. We accepted being temporarily referred to as “The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia” in order to become a member of the United Nations. We changed our flag to save ourselves from Greece’s embargo, to lower the risk of the war from the former Yugoslav territories spilling over to us, and for two years, our country wasn’t even allowed to raise its own flag on the flagpoles outside the UN in New York. We added the adjective “North” to Macedonia to become a member of NATO.
So maybe Macedonia’s sad story isn’t as sad as it seems.
And let’s remember, the longer we wait, the more bitter the pill we’ll eventually have to swallow.
2 Mickoski wonders how he’s supposed to tell his citizens that, if we want to begin accession talks with the EU, we’ll have to amend the Constitution once again.
How will he tell them? The same way he’ll tell Macedonian citizens they’ll have to give up on the EU if we don’t do what’s already been agreed, to include the Bulgarians in the Preamble.
That, in itself, is a fair choice. No EU. Fine, let’s look for another way forward. Let’s stop fooling ourselves with photo ops at every Summit, only to turn around and complain it’s not fair when Albania ends up in a position to veto us.
3 Sure, the EU didn’t learn its lesson from 2008, when Greece vetoed our entry into NATO – they couldn’t care less, they’re the EU, after all. But why haven’t we learned ours?
This isn’t new, we saw it and experienced it all back when VMRO-DPMNE was in power. Yet, we choose to live in a bubble, in a country hijacked by political parties.
The more I hear, the more it all starts to feel like 2008 again. Even at the “Macedonia 2025” Summit, the guest Mickoski has been introducing for months as one of the people from “Trump’s perimeter” took the spotlight with his statements that he’s interested in investing in archaeology because he heard that someone had discovered the grave of Alexander the Great’s grandmother near Bitola.
Even the Macedonian government’s obsession with Trump, as a counterweight to the fickle and deceitful Europe, reminds me of 2008. They’re hoping America will save us from this EU hostage situation. In April 2008, US President George Bush was confident that, at the NATO Summit in Bucharest, Croatia, Albania, and Macedonia would receive invitations for membership. After all, the three countries were the inseparable “Adriatic Triple” and were meant to fly together “as a flock in NATO.” And then, bam, despite Bush’s statements, despite his planned speech in Zagreb’s main square right after the Summit that was supposed to mark the accession of all three Balkan states, Greece vetoed, Croatia and Albania soon joined NATO, and the flock disintegrated.
So here we are, heading back from 2025 to 2008, and at this rate, all that’s left for us it dig graves and go searching for Alexander.
Even if we do find him, what’s the big deal? We’ve destroyed everything we’ve uncovered so far, we don’t know how to preserve it, let alone sell it as a story. And, truth be told, we can’t even manage to clear the rubbish around it.
Translated by Nikola Gjelincheski
