1 Wow, Prime Minister Hristijan Mickoski really gave Ursula von der Leyen a piece of his mind during a lunch in Brussels. He defended the national interests without lowering himself and without licking their boots. He put his foot down: “If you want to accept us into the EU, you’ll find a way to do it,” and after that headed to Shtip to lay tiles on the street where a giant two-metre-long pastrmajlija was unveiled.
Before leaving for Brussels, the Prime Minister said that he would communicate “the frustrations of Macedonian citizens, because for over a decade and a half, we haven’t been able to start the accessions talks with the EU due to artificially imposed obstacles that no other country has faced.”
As if that’s the topic of conversation. I can just picture the hosts’ surprise at that remark: Hey, we’re offering to give you hundreds of millions of euros, and this guy shows up to tell us stories about his frustrations.
Last autumn, the European Union decided to allocate 6 billion euros for the development of the Western Balkans countries. Each of the 6 countries that belong to the black hole in the middle of Europe must prepare projects to access these funds. So, I expected Mickoski to tell the people in Brussels how he plans to spend the money they’ve decided to grant us.
I’m sure they told him the same way they had told the previous government a hundred times before, even coming to our Assembly to deliver speeches: We understand your frustrations. But do you have a plan for how you’ll spend the money that we’ve decided to give you as consolation for not letting you join? We won’t pay for psychiatric treatments to address those frustrations. Do you have any other requests? For instance, do you have a project ready for funding, one that goes beyond the linear increase of pensions and expansions of schools and kindergartens? A project so significant that it will bring you closer to the EU.
They’ve already decided to allocate the money among us, so if we don’t take it, they’ll simply redistribute it to Serbia, Kosovo, Albania, Montenegro, or Bosnia and Herzegovina. They’ll find a way to put it to good use if we’re too incompetent to spend it. After all, if Mickoski is so skilled at governing with or without that money, let him bring the EU here. Then he can continue to be as frustrated as he likes. Perhaps that will resolve his frustrations. Ours as well.
Ultimately, if we don’t act that way, it all comes down to just attending lunches and giving people a piece of his mind in vain.
2 It’s not like Mickoski doesn’t have a point when he says that if the EU countries wanted to admit us, they would have found a way by now. Bulgaria isn’t the problem, Bulgaria is just their excuse. Plus, I’m convinced that if they could admit Bulgaria, they can certainly admit us. We’re smaller than a single suburb of a European metropolis, where citizens believed in the EU and waited patiently for the EU without moving to the EU. But, let’s not get even more frustrated with those topics, I’m sick and tired of it.
In the meantime, governments throughout the EU have changed, the government here has changed, so maybe they no longer see enlargement as a good idea. Or perhaps they still do. What I’m saying is that it’s not about liking or hating someone. The point is: if we’re going to negotiate, let’s at least gain something from it. That’s been the point since the very declaration of independence, but it’s dawned on us too late, because we’ve lost 20 years refusing to accept the fact that we were negotiating with Greece over the name.
You can’t influence EU enlargement policy. And you certainly can’t change their principle of consensus. We’ve been living with the Bulgarian veto for five years now. It’s no small matter. And I have a feeling we’ll keep living that way. The idea here is: be practical. Do something. And if you’ve decided to negotiate with the EU, try to gain something from it. That’s the only way we’ll see any benefit from those lunches in Brussels.
3 Just like we saw benefits from the lunch President Gordana Siljanovska – Davkova attended in Sofia. And there you have it, in the spirit of the sad fate of the Macedonian people, we’re once again victims because President Rumen Radev set the Macedonian president up to have her photo taken only in front of the Bulgarian flag.
Let’s face it, we don’t have a proper protocol to organise even a simple cultural diplomacy visit for the president just 200 kilometres away from Skopje. Those who knew how it was done in the former country have retired, and now, incompetent staff appointed by the parties don’t bother to learn anything because they think they already know everything. Yet, we’re acting all tough, thinking that with our diplomacy and the personnel in key ministries, we can successfully lobby 27 EU countries to change their enlargement policy.
Radev is genuinely malicious. But our people walked right into it. The Bulgarians say that there was no need for a Macedonian flag because the president was neither on an official nor a working visit. Are we to understand the situation like this: I wanted to go see an opera, so I thought, why not call Radev to ask if he’s around, I could drop by for a cup of coffee. And he says, no, madam, not just a cup of coffee. You must come over for lunch. But I’m not alone, I’m bringing along two children with me, the ministers of foreign affairs and culture. It’s not a big deal, we’ll all have lunch together, I’ll also invite Vice President Iotova, the one who opened the Bulgarian club “Vancho Mihailov” in Bitola, we’ll chat about the Copenhagen criteria, and then you can go to the theatre.
There wasn’t a Macedonian flag even at the meeting with our Minister of Culture, Zoran Ljutkov, while our head of diplomacy, Timcho Mucunski, didn’t even meet his Bulgarian counterpart. He just had lunch. They should have posted photos from the lunch so we could all see what they ate, just in case they were served something nasty there too.
Say what you will about the Bulgarians, but it wasn’t them who posted photos from the President’s Office. It was ours guys who, with great fanfare and bragging, shared photos of both our president and Minister Ljutkov without the Macedonian national flag. And then we go on to say that the Bulgarians are up to no good, we should issue them a demarche, but then their ambassador refuses to accept it, so our ambassador ends up submitting it, it seems that she’ll leave it at the front desk of the archive, then Boyko Borisov will get the Macedonian Vice Prime Minister, Aleksandar Nikoloski, replaced for calling them uncivilised hosts and will stop all talks with Macedonia, but then somewhere in Budapest, Nikoloski went berserk and fired back with a video with some tiles in the background, as if he had been hiding in a restroom while filming… if tactful diplomacy is what you want then that’s what you’ll get, thank goodness World War III hasn’t broken out yet.
After this diplomatic scandal, Prime Minister Mickoski stated that he found it important that “Europe and the world could see, on an open stage, as we expected, what the true intentions of the leadership in Sofia are.”
For crying out loud. For 26 years, Europe saw Greece’s true intentions and it didn’t bat an eye. For 17 years in a row, the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg has ruled against Bulgaria for violating human rights by not recognising the Macedonian minority, so what, they’re inside, we’re outside. We had a verdict from the International Court in The Hague in our favour in the dispute with Greece, but still they couldn’t care less, and now we expect Europe and the world to be alarmed over a flag.
We know Bulgarians perhaps all too well, they’re nobody’s fools. An ordinary citizen goes skiing, and even at Deve Bair, when crossing the border, he’s ready for provocations, he needs to be on his toes, to be all ears, he counts to three before saying anything, yet we let our president to be dragged around by journalists on the street, with microphones and cameras shoved in her face. On the other hand, she recited poetry in the middle of Sofia, she enjoys delivering fancy speeches like a true professor.
History has taught us that the only thing you can expect from Bulgaria is trouble. You don’t go asking for it yourself.
Translated by Nikola Gjelincheski
