Skopje, 6 June 2022 (MIA) – Skopje and Sofia need to reach a solution to the open issues, and once it is reached it will be shared with the public, while France, which is currently holding the EU Presidency, facilitates talks between the two parties but there’s no concrete proposal on the table, Prime Minister Dimitar Kovachevski said Monday in Probishtip. “Over the past 30 days there was speculation about a solution and about someone someone hiding such a solution. I always said that talks over open political issues between the Republic of Bulgaria and our country are conducted at the level of the Foreign Ministry and this weekend we were convinced that talks are really conducted at the level of the Foreign Ministry. First they were held at the level of experts, and then at the level of foreign ministers. Every time I kept saying that the moment there’s a solution that is acceptable to both sides, and is based on European values, maintains the dignity of the politicians, institutions and the citizens of the two countries, it will be shared with the institutions,” Kovachevski told reporters. Regarding whether there will be a new meeting after Sunday’s talks between the foreign ministers of North Macedonia and Bulgaria, Bujar Osmani and Teodora Genchovska, as well as “what the French proposal contains”, PM Kovachevski stressed that there’s no such proposal from France. “France holds the EU Presidency and I see the commitment of the EU Presidency, the French President and of course the French Foreign Ministry to put this issue high on the agenda of France’s EU Presidency. Within their competencies and capacity, they help facilitate the talks between the Republic of Bulgaria and the Republic of North Macedonia, but there is no concrete proposal on the table, because it is still us as neighbors that need to find a solution which will really be a basis to build good neighborly relations and the basis to hold the first intergovernmental conference for our country with the EU,” Kovachevski said after a visit to the Tab Mak factory in Probishtip. Asked whether the overflight ban for Russian aircrafts remain in place in terms of refusing to grant the use the country’s airspace for Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s flight to Belgrade, PM Kovachevski said this flight had no different treatment and the ban remains in line with decisions at NATO level and alignment with the EU’s foreign policy. “We have passed a decision to ban flight for airlines owned by the Russian Federation over the territory of our country. We are a NATO member, which means that decisions passed in NATO are also our decisions and our foreign policy is fully aligned with EU policy. As regards the flight in question, there is no different treatment in terms of the decision which has been passed, which is in force and which remains in force. There’s no different treatment for this particular flight,” Kovachevski said.