Skopje, 5 April 2023 (MIA) - After our alliance in NATO and partnership in the European Union, I believe that in a few years North Macedonia will join the EU. Croatia has been supporting you on that path wholeheartedly and without any conditions for many years. Now is the time to make right moves, Croatia's Prime Minister Andrej Plenković told a joint press conference with his host Dimitar Kovachevski in Skopje on Wednesday. 

"I'm one of the actors who have been following North Macedonia's European path for years, who knows that at the meeting in Zagreb 23 years ago, you signed the Stabilization and Association Agreement even before Croatia did. Since then, you have made a number of reforms, you were unjustifiably stopped on that European path. So, as a country that completed the integration process in 2013 and that will mark 10 years of the membership in two and a half months, we are trying to resolve those obstacles," said Plenković. 

He mentioned that the new negotiating methodology was adopted when Croatia held the EU Presidency, and a decision was made to start negotiations with North Macedonia and Albania. 

"Now we are at the phase of speeding up those final processes, so that the path gets its own momentum, and in the context of granting candidate status to Moldova and Ukraine, conditional perspective status to Georgia, and candidate status to Bosnia and Herzegovina, now North Macedonia can speed up that process. Croatia will help in that process. One way is the assignment of Vladimir Drobnjak, who was the chief negotiator for Croatia, to help the minister and your entire government, and that is the best show of cooperation and the right moves at the right time. And that's why now is the time to make the right moves, to make strategic decisions that will lead to strategic steps after the numerous moves that are already behind you," Plenković said.

PM Kovachevski pointed out that the Government will continue to work intensively towards extending and expanding the cooperation with Croatia, noting that the countries are connected not only by the common past in the former Yugoslavia, but also by the will for a better common future in the EU. He added that the two countries have no open issues, are continuously building and constantly tracing new paths for mutual cooperation. As many as 44 concluded bilateral agreements speak for the excellent bilateral relations, he said, while 15 other agreements are at an initiative phase, and the most intensive is the cooperation in the area of ​​European integration.

"Croatia is among the most vocal and most consistent supporters of our European integration. Actions speak for that, not just words, including the decisions to open negotiations with North Macedonia and Albania, made exactly during Croatia's EU Presidency in the first half of 2020, amid the extraordinary circumstances of the Covid 19 pandemic. Their former chief negotiator with the EU is today our chief adviser to our chief negotiator. His experience is invaluable to us, and it is part of why we have an exceptionally successful screening process," said Kovachevski.