Von der Leyen in Skopje: Advice for a bilateral meeting with Bulgaria and the promise of a European roadmap

The President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, visited Skopje today, where she met one-on-one with Prime Minister Hristijan Mickoski. After the meeting, as Prva Skopska reports, she sent a clear message: North Macedonia belongs to the European Union and, after the accession process is unblocked, Brussels will come with concrete roadmaps for the next steps.

As the Kolegium portal writes, von der Leyen confirmed that a new first step towards unblocking the process has been agreed with Prime Minister Mickoski. “I can confirm that we agreed to have a new first step and to try to unblock the process, to turn it into a real process. What will happen next week is the review of the accession process for countries that are deep in this process, those that open and close chapters — that is where the roadmaps come out. My personal view is that we can be very fast with North Macedonia, because we are working intensively on the necessary reforms,” she said at the joint press conference.

One of the main developments of the meeting, according to Mickoski himself, was the advice of the President of the European Commission that Skopje should request a bilateral meeting with the Bulgarian side. “Next week the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade, Timço Mucunski, will be in Sofia for an event related to Corridor 8. We received the advice to ask the host for a meeting on a bilateral basis. I immediately asked the minister to send a diplomatic note and request a meeting with his counterpart, so that the process moves forward,” Mickoski declared.

The Macedonian Prime Minister requested stronger involvement of the European Union in the dialogue with Bulgaria, insisting that any agreement should be predictable and should not leave room for new bilateral conditions. Von der Leyen, for her part, reiterated that “the EU will welcome North Macedonia with its identity and its language”, but underlined that the constitutional changes to include the Bulgarian minority in the Constitution remain the key step before the opening of the first chapter cluster “Fundamentals”.

Today’s visit is the sixth consecutive annual visit of the President of the European Commission to the region; before Skopje she visited Tirana, Podgorica and Pristina. Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina were not included in this tour because of the upcoming parliamentary and general elections.