1 To many happy returns of Goce Delchev’s birthday, which we’ll celebrate together with the Bulgarians on 4 February. We had an optimistic start in our second year trying to resolve the dispute with Bulgaria and to have the veto on the start of the EU accession talks lifted, with four-day intensive meetings between the new Macedonian and Bulgarian Governments in Skopje and Sofia. A new hope is born.
There, in their Assembly, Prime Minister Kiril Petkov says yet again that “the topic of a Macedonian national minority is absolutely unacceptable”, he’ll look for repressed Bulgarians in Macedonia, the Bulgarian Government won’t recognize 11 rulings of the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg about the rights of Macedonians in Bulgaria, and we’ll keep on applauding as if things are looking up because of the joint commemoration.
Zaev too had his fair share of commemorating things together with Borisov. They commemorated anything and everything, they kept greeting each other by hugging, kissing. In Dojran, they even celebrated a Bulgarian general from the Balkan Wars. We’ve been commemorating St. Cyril and Methodius in Rome together for years. Radev even flew Pendarovski to the commemoration on a Bulgarian plane.
But, it is what it is, there’s a new government there and there’s a new government here. And joint commemorations are an old trick. That didn’t lead to lifting the veto on the EU accession talks. What step forward have they taken so we’d feel there’s a new hope? There were five blackmails, and now there are four!? A step forward will be taken when Bulgaria unblocks our path to the EU. As for the joint working groups, they can continue to meet as part of the process of friendly relations during the accession negotiations.
If only the problem we have with Bulgaria lied in the commemoration of Goce Delchev. This way, it feels more fitting to celebrate the anniversaries of all the Bulgarian vetoes on Macedonia. Together.
2 We were given the EU candidate status in December 2005 when the UK held the EU presidency.
In February 2008, when Slovenia held the presidency, the Union adopted an Accession Partnership, and Macedonia was to start negotiations in 2009, first during the Czech presidency and then during the Swedish presidency.
In March 2019, when Romania held the EU presidency, we received a “crystal clear date” for the start of the accession talks in June. Just our luck, that’s when Macron had the bright idea to look for a new enlargement methodology, so we had to wait for Croatia to take over the EU presidency in 2020.
Then, Germany, which held the EU presidency in the second half of 2020, was convinced that we’d start the accession talks in December. That’s when the first Bulgarian veto came.
After Germany, in 2021 it was Portugal’s turn. They even drafted a proposal to resolve the dispute. In June, the second Bulgarian veto came. So – once we had finished a whole rotation of all the presidencies of the EU we returned to 2008 – Slovenia holds the presidency. Then – the third Bulgarian veto.
Since we are already in the second rotation of presidencies, it’s seems we’ll have to wait for the third one as well. This new hope brought by the joint commemorations of the Bulgarian vetoes should provide a new impetus to the enthusiasm for EU. Since, hope dies last, right? One day it will be Albania’s turn to take over the presidency. Then at the Tirana Summit, they’ll find a way how to ask Bulgaria to stop blocking Macedonia’s future. Then, at another summit, say in Belgrade, in honour of the occasion, the start of the accession negotiations will take place during the Serbian presidency of the EU. If we don’t start the negotiations during the Serbian presidency of the EU, then the first intergovernmental conference will certainly be held during the Montenegrin presidency.
If this is optimism, then I don’t know what pessimism would be.
3The new impetus in the Macedonian-Bulgarian relations isn’t felt just because of the birthday atmosphere around Goce Delchev. In order to have the Bulgarian veto on our path to the EU lifted we won’t just commemorate things. We’ll also play football.
In Sofia, everyone arranged something, so Artan Grubi, not to be outdone, arranged a football match. The Cabinet of the First Deputy Prime Minister, who co-chairs the joint working group on culture, education, science, tourism, youth and sports, said that his working group has set the common priorities they’ll be working on in the coming period, and one of them is “to organize a football match between the cabinets of both governments”.
It is to be expected now that in the “spirit of the transparency of this government” Grubi will regularly give the public reports whether Kovachevski’s Cabinet is in good form before the match.
In addition, Prime Minister Kovachevski should be especially cautious about Grubi selecting his team. He should be allowed to select only the players. God forbid he hires the supporters from the “Smugglers” group, as he did hire them once before, in 2011, in the fight regarding the church at the Skopje Fortress. Or like in 2019, when he made it possible for the “Shkupi” supporters to celebrate their jubilee in the new golden building of the Macedonian National Theatre. They didn’t like “Skopje 2014”, so they tried to destroy it from the inside.
4I don’t understand what’s so dramatic, and even less so, what’s so funny in the statement of the new Minister of Defence Slavjanka Pretrovska that Macedonia’s armed forces are preparing in the case of a potential Russian military aggression against Ukraine.
In an interview with Television Telma, the Minister said: “The engagement of our army is defined at a force generation conference led by NATO’s Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe and each member state makes available personnel, units or equipment according to their capabilities. At the moment, we have an obligation and we are carrying out analyzes for the possibility of our potential participation in the possible de-escalation of the situation.”
Nothing dramatic. Nothing funny in the jokes on social media that Macedonia will attack Russia.
We are a NATO member state. We had been working hard for thirty years to become a NATO member state. We’re inside – in NATO. And it wouldn’t be serious at all for us to pretend that we live on another planet, in a situation when the whole world is talking about a potential new war in Europe. Our NATO allies have said that they will side with Ukraine in the event of a conflict. NATO is primarily a military alliance. And as a member state of that organization, as allies of the other 29 countries, it’s perfectly normal for us to count our resources, to see what we can and can’t do to contribute to the possible conflict between NATO and Russia, because we’ve signed an agreement with obligations. Maybe we’ll let them enter our air space. Maybe we’ll let them use our airports. Maybe we’ll send medical teams. We may not have tanks, but we have snipers. We have PR experts as well. And internet bots for cyber attacks with a bad sense of humor. That’s how things stand with alliances. You give what you have. Others give you what you don’t have.
Plus, was it funny when we sent troops to Afghanistan and Iraq? Why aren’t there any jokes that we have soldiers in Kosovo and Bosnia and Herzegovina?
All this mockery has nothing to do with NATO or Russia. Minister Petrovska’s statement was just another chance for them to make fun of a woman in public office and to make rude jokes about her physical appearance.
You think you’re cool when you’re making fun of our participation in NATO. When in fact, you’re hiding your own stupidity behind NATO.
Translated by Nikola Gjelincheski
