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Tomorrow in Brussels, North Macedonia holds the first Intergovernmental Conference with the EU, in which Prime Minister Dimitar Kovacevski will read the opening statement in the Macedonian language.
After that, the verification that will last a year and a half begins and after the end of that process, the next intergovernmental conference is planned, which will finish the opening phase of membership negotiations and its holding is conditional on the changes in the Constitution.
The holding of the conference was made possible after the approval of the much-discussed French proposal in the Macedonian parliament. The green light came in the form of the approval of several conclusions related to guarantees for the Macedonian language and identity. “The Assembly forces the government, through the delegations in the talks, to adhere to the definition of unconditional respect for the language, identity and culture of the Macedonian people, as elements that are not negotiated with the EU. In the framework of the talks, the Macedonian language should be without clarifications, without additions and without footnotes”, says the proposal-conclusions that were presented by the Parliamentary Group of SDSM.
The French proposal envisages overcoming the differences between Skopje and Sofia regarding the Macedonian language, identity and historical past, while the Bulgarian side asks the Macedonian side to include the Bulgarian minority in the preamble of the constitution, as equal to other peoples.
The chairman of the Democratic Union for Integration party, Ali Ahmeti, called this a historic moment for the citizens of the country. In an interview for the Voice of America, he said that the claims that the country’s authorities have made concessions regarding the Macedonian language, history and identity are unjustified.
“I think that the opposition was swept away by a wave of emotions, by a wave of folklorism, to put it briefly, there was a tendency to manipulate the masses, allegedly that the Macedonian national identity is being lost, the Macedonian language is being lost, the Macedonian nation is being assimilated with the Bulgarian nation. All these were more for daily politics and to add points to their parties, than something substantial that was in this whole campaign, or all this propaganda that they did and this was finally seen, even the masses in general realized that all this is done only to improve their political position in society, rather than something essential in all this activity they did”.
For almost two years, Bulgaria, a member state of the EU, maintained its veto on the start of negotiations between the bloc and Skopje, due to disagreements regarding Macedonian history and language.
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