The new government of North Macedonia wants to re-negotiate the conditions for proceeding to the next stage of the EU accession by delaying the required constitutional change. Experts believe that neither Bulgaria, which demanded the change, nor the EU, which brokered the agreement between the two countries, would be open to accepting it, meaning that there is a risk of another stalemate in the accession process of North Macedonia.
The obligation to change the Constitution stems from the proposal put forward by the French Presidency of the European Union in June 2022, which was accepted by Bulgaria and the previous government of North Macedonia. It came after Sofia had vetoed the start of Skopje’s accession negotiations for more than a year, demanding the resolution of identity issues and interpretations of history.
In July 2022, the Council of the EU adopted conclusions stating that North Macedonia will be able to complete the opening phase of accession negotiations as soon as it implements constitutional changes with a view to including Bulgarians as one of the nationalities living in the country.
The preamble of the current version of the Constitution recognizes several specific nationalities and “others” as the citizens of North Macedonia. The previous government, led by the Social Democratic Party of Macedonia (SDSM) submitted amendments to the Constitution in July 2023, naming several additional nationalities, including Bulgarians, in the preamble.
Last August, a plenary session on the adoption of the amends was held but it was put on hold as the required two-thirds majority votes could not be ensured. VMRO-DPMNE and other parties which were in opposition at the time did not support it.
VMRO has repeatedly rejected, as it puts it, the Bulgarian “dictate”. During this spring’s election campaign, the party leader and the current Prime Minister Hristijan Mickoski called the acceptance of the compromise a “capitulant decision” and stressed that “85% of the citizens are against it”.
The alternative path proposed by VMRO-DPMNE has been to re-negotiate the conditions with the European Union so that the application of the amendments is delayed until the country becomes a member of the EU. The 2022 agreement, the party representatives stressed, was the result of bad negotiating of the SDSM government.
If this proposal was accepted, it would allow North Macedonia to complete the opening phase of accession talks. This would start a phase of opening and closing specific negotiating chapters, a process likely to last for years.
“Тhe delayed application of the constitutional amendments is a legitimate alternative offered by VMRO-DPMNE. At the same time, we will demand guarantees from the EU for the Macedonian language and identity, but also a guarantee that we will no longer have bilateralization of the European integration of our country”, said Timčko Mucunski, the new Minister of Foreign Affairs, during the election campaign.
Nevertheless, the experts do not believe that this proposal will be accepted. Simonida Kacarska, Director of the European Policy Institute in Skopje, does not find it realistic that the EU member states would consent to re-open these conditions.
“While a re-negotiating of these conditions was more prominent in the electoral campaign discussions, having taken office, the new government has not been clear on the way forward on the accession talks of the country”, Kacarska says for EWB.
The program presented by Hristijan Mickoski to the parliament in June was not very specific regarding the issue of constitutional change. It stated that the government would offer proposals, “which will produce conditions for significant predictability of the EU integration process, protected from unprincipled demands”.
Aleksandar Kržalovski, Executive Director of the Macedonian Center for International Cooperation, believes that the proposal makes sense. He says that, since the constitutional amendments are a condition for the country to become an EU member, they should be enforced at the time when that happens.
“It will also ensure that there will be no further such demands on the path to EU, which is a real fear of Macedonians, who were already promised accession to EU after the change of the country name”, Kržalovski says.
However, he also believes that it is not realistic to expect that Bulgaria, and for that matter EU, will agree to this additional provision of the already agreed process by the previous Macedonian government.
The proposal was indeed met with disapproval in Bulgaria. Its Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a statement two days after Mickoski’s government took office, saying that the declared intention of North Macedonia not to adhere to the international commitments and the agreements is unacceptable.
“Raising ideas for re-negotiation of already undertaken international commitments would only lead to a new distancing from the start date of the EU membership negotiations”, the statement reads.
Since the beginning of July, the Ambassador of the European Union to North Macedonia, David Geer, and the US Ambassador to the country, Angela Aggeler, also stated that the issue was closed and that there would be no new negotiations.
Maria Simeonova, Head of Sofia Office of the European Council on Foreign Relations, also believes that the attempts of the new government in Skopje to renegotiate the negotiation framework with the EU will be met with a unified response from the EU member states and institutions.
“The so-called French proposal, which required considerable diplomatic and political effort, and was supported by all EU27, offers a clear path for North Macedonia’s EU accession process. From Bulgaria’s perspective, there is neither political nor public support for reopening the issue”, Simeonova says for our portal.
The French proposal for lifting the veto was accepted by the outgoing government of Kiril Petkov days after it lost a motion of no confidence in June 2022. Since then, no stable government has been formed in Bulgaria, with the country holding a total of six parliamentary elections since the spring of 2021.
Aleksandar Kržalovski points out that there are other possible options for breaking an impasse between Bulgaria and North Macedonia.
“The new Prime Minister is mentioning reciprocity in the relations with Bulgaria. So, if we are asked to recognize the Bulgarian minority in our Constitution, then it should be the same or similar case in Bulgaria, regarding the Macedonian minority there. He calls on the European Court of Human Rights cases, where there are 14 sentences against Bulgaria for not allowing registration of associations of Macedonians there”, he says.
According to Kržalovski, a sign of goodwill from Bulgaria will be to actually comply with those Court sentences and register those associations, which may also open the path in Macedonia for Constitutional changes.
“If all of this fails, then probably there will be a certain period with a stalemate, unless there is a new initiative from the EU side, regarding the accession process”, he concludes.