Macedonian opposition leader: We don’t need Europe if we assimilate

At the rally of his party, VMRO-DPMNE before the Government of North Macedonia, Mickoski said that “the people are waking up and all those who want to end Macedonia [së Veriut] signing in a day or two, the Macedonian people and Macedonian citizens will not forget this. We don’t need Europe if we have to assimilate”, said VMRO leader Mickoski during the protest with the motto “Ultimatum – No thanks”.

“I don’t want to be in Europe because I have the right to be a Macedonian, who speaks the Macedonian language and who fights for his Macedonia, for his identity, for his culture, for his history and for his heritage,” declared Mickoski .

He added that the Macedonian identity is above all evaluating the new French proposal as “harmful” because according to him, “it is not different from the first proposal”.

But, in advance, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Bujar Osmani, stated that the modified French proposal for the settlement of the dispute between Skopje and Sofia, closes the issues of Macedonian identity and language, which, according to him, are accepted as such by the European Union.

“Bulgaria can maintain its position on the Macedonian language, but this will not be acceptable to the EU in the context of the negotiations. The propagandists say this is a dead end, we will be ‘Bulgarianised’, but we are here to dismantle such narratives. I have heard variants that had footnotes, qualifications. We spent ninety percent of the time to close the language issue”, Osmani said, clarifying the French proposal for which consultations are taking place in North Macedonia with all the factors in the country.

According to Osmani, the chief diplomat, the proposal can only be passed by the decision of the Government without the need for the seat from the Parliament, as the Prime Minister of North Macedonia, Dimitar Kovacevski, had previously stated.

For the head of Macedonian diplomacy, Bujar Osmani, the “biggest difference” between the new and the old French proposal is that “the Macedonian language remains protected in the EU and the previous proposals such as “the language of North Macedonia”, “the language according Constitution” and the footnote with an asterisk that “the Macedonian language is unacceptable for Bulgaria, have been rejected”.

He said that Macedonian is recognized by the EU and with the accession process, it will become one of the official languages ​​of the EU”.

Bulgaria has continuously insisted that the Macedonian language is a dialect of the Bulgarian language, as well as its identity, which according to Sofia has “Bulgarian roots”.

This has caused Bulgaria, as a member state of the EU, in November 2020 to use the veto to block the start of negotiations for the accession of North Macedonia to the EU.

Bulgaria, with the first proposal of France, has also insisted on the inclusion of the Bulgarian minority in the Constitution of North Macedonia before the membership talks start, but with the modification of the proposal, according to the chief diplomat Osmani, this will happen before the opening of the first chapter of talks.

“The proposal that was earlier envisaged that constitutional changes would first be approved, then the negotiations would begin. Now there is the beginning of the negotiations, the first intergovernmental conference, the opening of the negotiations, the complete verification process and before the opening of the first chapter, we must make constitutional changes”, emphasized Osmani.

The leaders of the Macedonian institutions said that the new proposal does not touch the historical issue that is also an open dispute between Skopje and Sofia./Rel

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