site.btaEconomy Minister to President: Stop Speculating with North Macedonia Topic

In a Facebook post on Saturday, Economy Minister and Bulgarian Socialist Party leader Korneliya Ninova called on the head of State to “stop speculating with the Macedonia topic”. “You are calling on the Government to dispel all doubts that the [Sofia] veto on the Republic of North Macedonia [EU accession talks] might be lifted. It is you who is suggesting these doubts. The Cabinet has said more than once that we will not lift the veto. The only body which has a say in the matter is Parliament,” Ninova’s post reads.  

She recalled the Council of Ministers’ June 15 decision that all proposals concerning the Republic of North Macedonia will be submitted to Parliament for approval. The National Assembly ratified the 2017 Treaty of Friendship, Goodneighbourliness and Cooperation with Skopje and no other body can change the conditions under this agreement, Ninova wrote. “Because in a parliamentary republic the National Assembly is the highest-ranking body. Because in it everything is public and transparent and because there the incumbents, the opposition, and the public can get acquainted with the true facts and no one can manipulate them. Mr President, do you want the [former prime minister Boyko] Borissov model to make a return, where he single-handedly took the decisions and Parliament was nothing to him?” the post reads.

Earlier in the day, President Radev told reporters that the Government has not only failed to elaborate a Bulgarian proposal for a lift of the veto and is now tabling a French one in Parliament, but is also transferring the full responsibility to the National Assembly, without expressing a position. “The Prime Minister cannot table someone else’s proposal without expressing his opinion. He is not a courier, he is a prime minister,” Radev told reporters. 

On Friday, it transpired that the parliamentary Foreign Policy Committee has received a French proposal for lifting Sofia's veto on the start of Skopje's negotiations but no official information was provided on the proposal's text. Bulgaria has been blocking the launch of the Brussels-Skopje negotiating process since November 2020, insisting that North Macedonia should first address the sticking points in bilateral relations: make progress in observing its 2017 bilateral treaty with Bulgaria, abandon hate speech against Bulgaria, and amend its Constitution to include the Bulgarians living on its territory so as to grant them equal rights with the other "state-establishing" peoples.