Skopje, 2 January 2025 (MIA) - Prime Minister Hristijan Mickoski says in a New Year’s interview with MIA he is always ready to talk to any political actor that has any idea promoting national reconciliation over state strategic interests.

He welcomes the idea for a joint strategy that he called for, followed by the junior government partner ZNAM through the so called “Platform”, and the opposition leader Venko Filipche by proposing a strategy above all party lines, saying it is becoming increasingly present in the public sphere.

He is yet to have communication with Filipche on the matter noting they meet frequently, “exchanging a few sentences”, as well as with other politicians in Parliament during Q&A session.

"I’ll remind you that in my October 23 speech, I called for this kind of unity that will culminate with a joint cooperation of the political stakeholders and the Macedonian Academy of Sciences and Arts. I called for the creation of a long-term strategy, spanning several decades, to know what we need to do and where the country should go. It’s a good thing this is more present in the public, it is finding its grounds, its roots and it’s a good thing that we have this kind of debates for national unity. I commend it. Of course. I’m always prepared to talk to anyone who has an idea or a proposal involving national reconciliation, to eliminate those daily occurring ad hominem political differences," Mickoski tells MIA.

With the Prime Minister, we talked about the first months since taking office, what has been done and what he considers to be the greatest achievement is in the past little over six months. He says there have been small achievements, which are probably not very evident for the citizens to see, but in general, rounding up his government’s work, Mickoski says stabilizing the situation is the greatest achievement as well as approaching ground zero, expected somewhere in the spring, in March or April.

“Macedonia couldn’t develop the way we want to if we hadn’t stabilized the situation. To me, it is the biggest challenge. I wouldn’t be subjective, but it was the public that ruled that the country had been lagging for seven years, for seven years we were in a stable free fall. In the May 8 presidential and parliamentary elections, the citizens said it out loud and their loudness was the result of wrong policies. This was one of the key challenges. The government account on June 24 over six months ago, was nearly 12 billion denars in the red. Today, there are several billion denars plus, meaning we had paid the debt. To revise the budget was also a challenge, as well as the Washington NATO Summit, the struggle we had outside the country, the struggle in Berlin, Brussels, Washington, London, literally everywhere where we tried to restore the positions after being sold or lost. As for the struggle at home? The struggle at home was dynamic so as to secure liquidity of the budget, means in the economy so as to raise the pensions, to count on increasing the salaries of healthcare workers, education staff and the subsidies overdue for the pensioners. For the first time, the K-15 annual leave allowance was paid to more than 83,000 civil servants, etc,” stresses Mickoski.

The PM says relations within the ruling coalition are excellent and at an exceptionally high level and adds that misunderstandings are overcome through conversation. He highlightes that they are continuing to build mutual trust and he is currently extremely satisfied with all government members and not considering any personnel changes.

Regarding DUI's suggestions that the scrapping of the Balancer ethnic diversity program and the request to the Constitutional Court for a constitutional review of the Law on Languages were undermining the foundations of the multiethnic state, Mickoski says "the party that used to portray itself as green and liberal" was yet again trying to attract public attention through fueling ethnic tensions and polarization.

"What is even more concerning is that they can't turn inward and understand where they have gone wrong. They have been losing their positions, even the small ones they had with our strategic partners, on a daily basis. Their rhetoric, their public message, has distanced them even more from any democratic processes and has put them in the company of radical elements, jeopardizing regional security," he says.

"If anyone thinks their naked populism and daily rhetoric of divisions and stirring ethnic tensions — motivated by their desire to be in the public eye so they can protect past processes suspected to have been full of crime and corruption — then that is really problematic. They can't get any Macedonian citizens to believe what they are saying because Macedonian citizens don't feel like that. Instead, they know that this group, aiming to hide things related to well-founded suspicions of crime and corruption in the past, has used and abused this kind of topics, which is why it has no influence,” says Mickoski.

On the support they got from DUI for the laws on a two-thirds majority, which is still required for some key reforms, Mickoski says he expected support from all parties, especially when voting on the administration reorganization.

He said not all countries required a two-thirds majority for this kind of reorganization, which was a practice at the start of many governments' terms in office, let alone governments that won landslide election victories.

But the two-thirds majority was necessary in this case because of the Constitution, he says, and because some opposition parties did not support the ruling coalition. According to Mickoski, those parties had expected the government to invite DUI into their coalition, saying, "These people are just like us, it's just a matter of time before they enter a coalition with DUI."

"But, as you can see, weeks, months have passed — years will pass — and they will realize we don't work like that," Mickoski says.

Asked if his party could enter into a coalition with a reformed DUI at the upcoming local elections, the PM says he cannot rule out a coalition with any political party. However, he says the government coalition was stable and based on a sincere relationship between the coalition partners.

Asked whether he had any communication with DUI leader Ali Ahmeti in light of former Deputy Prime Minister Artan Grubi fleeing the country after becoming a suspect in the State Lottery case, Mickoski says he was communicating with all Members of Parliament as part of his regular attendance of parliamentary Q&A sessions. Apart from that, he said, they hadn't had any substantial meetings.

Regarding the comparisons between Grubi's escape and Gruevski's escape and how often the system failed when faced with high-profile individuals suspected of corruption, the PM says the public was right to look similarities between those two individuals in terms of accountability to justice, but also in the steps taken afterward.

"I wouldn't say that the problem is completely systemic here," Mickoski said, pointing to "the human factor coupled with problems in the system. These will not be the last cases. There will be more of these cases in the future. If anyone thinks these will be the last ones, they won't, unfortunately, because of the system's partisan institutions. Because of individuals beholden to some political power holders who put them into the system, so as a sign of gratitude, they try to be loyal to them until the very end. But that life is an expensive life. That life is uncertain and it is a life I wouldn't wish on anyone – to be a fugitive from justice, somewhere far away from your family, outside of your daily routines, unable to come,” Mickoski says.

In the specific case of Grubi, the PM says he was more worried that, according to initial reports, Ahmeti knew where Grubi was.

"In a functional system — and I hope ours is still functional, especially the judiciary and the prosecution, despite its holding the lowest rating among citizens — it makes sense that any person who knows or has any information on the whereabouts of any fugitive from justice to be called in for questioning to provide that information, because Artan Grubi is a fugitive from justice. If Ali Ahmeti has any information, prosecutors, based on those allegations, should invite him for an informative talk and have him tell them where he is," Mickoski says.

Quizzed about the numerous actions by the police and prosecution related to high corruption, crime, as well as a terrorist cell, and whether he expects a swift and efficient epilogue or a repeat of the past and drawn out cases, the Prime Minister stresses that everything that is up to the Government and its institutions as the executive branch will be done flawlessly, with the rest being up to the judicial bodies.

“It is a fact that the presumption of innocence is a constitutionally guaranteed norm, but also these things should proceed in a normal way, with the institutions and the law enforcement bodies carrying out an investigation, securing evidence, etc., and then the courts should reach their verdicts provided they determine that the evidence is sufficient to launch a process. So, whether they will be drawn out or not, whether justice, as we expect it, will come, isn’t up to the executive branch and the Government. Our job is to secure all necessary evidence as institutions and deliver it to the prosecution and the judiciary. After that, the judiciary is the one that should lead and complete the process,” says the Prime Minister.

Regarding the reforms in the judiciary, which has a low level of public trust, and whether he still believes the Judicial Council and the Council of Public Prosecutors should be completely dissolved, Mickoski says the current Judicial Council might be lawful, but lacks legitimacy among the citizens.

“It may be lawful, but it lacks legitimacy since its credibility has been destroyed, the trust is at a single digit percentage, it is a historic low, and if they lack the awareness to leave by themselves, then we must take certain steps so they can leave. But this doesn’t mean replacing the people who have led us to this situation with others that will continue doing that. The members who should reinvigorate this body should really have an impressive goal and agenda in front of themselves, as well as institutional memory behind, i.e., to have a biography, to carry weight, because if we just replace the members with other people, while keeping the same habits and behavior then we haven’t achieved anything. The same will happen to us one day, we will leave, and others will come. Because when these changes happen, and they will happen as a result of the change in Parliament in which this Government holds the majority, and if there are no positive changes then, we will be the ones responsible and everyone will say, ‘see, they’re the same’, and this isn’t our goal. We don’t want to do that,” says Mickoski.

Asked about the claims that every government is trying to establish a partisan judiciary and whether a complete vetting, in the example of Albania, could be the best solution, Mickoski says he doesn’t believe that would be the right step, noting that the country has excellent legislation, with the only necessity being to free the prosecutors and courts from the hold of the political parties.

“We only need to free them and then they will start acting as they should be acting, i.e., prosecuting and judging in accordance with the legislation and the Constitution,” says Mickoski.

Asked about the progress of the case launched by the Prosecutor’s Office following his statement that as opposition leader he was being followed as an alleged organizer and financier of a paramilitary group, Mickoski says he wouldn’t like to share many details about the case, in the interest of the investigation.

“But what concerns me is the courage with which these institutions that should be looking after the country’s security, practically abused the mechanisms at their disposal for a political reckoning with the leaders of the opposition, in this case with me, as the leader of the largest opposition party at the time. And this completely violated my privacy. I don’t think this should be happening in Macedonia anymore. If we want to move forward, we mustn’t allow such installations, I would describe them as Communist-Bolshevik installations, to contaminate our institutions, especially the institutions that should be focused on the country’s security,” says the Prime Minister.

The Prime Minister says he expects the findings of the internal investigation to reach the Prosecutor’s Office, for it to be declassified as part of a judicial process and for those responsible to face justice.

According to Mickoski, there is nothing controversial about Bojan Hristovski’s appointment as head of the National Security Agency, in light of public controversy over the assessment by the State Commission for the Prevention of Corruption, where the case was handled by Cveta Ristova, who asked to be exempted from the procedure for the assessment of the validity of Hristovski’s diploma from the University of Skopje.

“Even today I fail to understand why we are trying to stain a process that is crystal clear. His diploma was disputed, and except for his TOEFL certificate, it was proven that there are no issues with anything and now we are relegating this topic about an institution related to the country’s security to daily politics. This isn’t in the public interest. I understand what public interest is, but this isn’t public interest. But fine, the issue was raised, the issue was closed, and now in search of a sensation to conjure up scandals for the sake of it a public debate is being created by individuals, not by everyone. Here, above all, I am referring to the irresponsible behavior of the opposition. But if they think this is how it should be then fine, we have nothing to fear, we are ready for a public debate,” says Mickoski.

As regards the further path of European integration and the messages from the latest summit in Brussels, he notes that European leaders no longer call the process enlargement, but reunification of Europe with the Western Balkans as the missing part.

“Both at home and abroad, I am trying to present our arguments, fight for the arguments of truth, the feelings that our Macedonian citizens have about everything that happened in the past, and everything we should have done. The uncertainty about the future, because again we are faced with bilateral obstacles, the fears of all that. Although we may have done what no other nation has done to join the European Union, we are still not even a millimetre closer to the European Union than we were almost 20 years ago when we got the candidate status. This is not because we are that bad, or because we are not delivering reforms and so on, but most often these are bilateral issues," Mickoski points out, adding that there are also internal issues that need to be resolved.

He stresses that reforms are necessary, but bilateralization of the process must not be allowed, i.e. bilateral issues must not be the decisive criterion on whether a country will move forward or not, as is the case with our country.

On whether there is support for constitutional amendments with delayed effect or some other creative solution is perhaps in play, Mickoski points out that there is not a single politician in the country, or an official from Brussels or from the world who has said “no” when presented with the arguments and the proposal.

“They all say that’s fair, reasonable. The fact is that the situation with our eastern neighbour still not having a government, a stable government, the decision-making factors and everything that is a reality there, makes the process difficult and then most often the decision is – ‘you know, Sofia does not accept that’. And we constantly present arguments that this proposal is not contrary to the conclusions, we reiterate our arguments about everything that happened in the past, about everything that we expect to happen in the future. How could we now explain to our citizens that we will be changing the Constitution for this reason, because of the argument that several hundred of our fellow citizens who say they are part of the Bulgarian community should be included as a constituent element, while tens of thousands of our fellow citizens in the past and hundreds of thousands of Macedonians in Bulgaria cannot even establish a non-governmental organization,” says Mickoski.

He says he is ready to meet with top Bulgarian officials in 2025 to consider all possibilities, noting however that he will not seek a solution at any cost, which would further complicate the process. According to him, every agreement must have a clear and predictable ending, which is why they are trying to renegotiate so that the process can have both a beginning and an end.

On EU decisions being made by consensus, whereby even countries that have completed negotiations can face a blockade, Mickoski says that was fine if the blockades arise from real problems.

“Everything that started back at the time when our southern neighbour continuously blocked us in both NATO and the EU due to a bilateral issue, i.e. the name issue, etc., has now slowly but surely become a practice. And I think that is the biggest problem with the European Union itself, because instead of seeing the positive experiences from the past, such a positive experience was the dispute between Croatia and Slovenia, and instead of conducting these bilateral disputes in that way, what happened with us is – bilateralization became a tool, i.e. instead of us becoming Europeans, the Europeans became Balkans, and that is the biggest problem with us now. Practically, the process of accession negotiations has been Balkanized. Instead of us becoming European, the process has been Balkanized because of such way of decision-making. That is why we must work together abroad, but at the same time, I will reiterate, the priority should be doing our homework,” says Mickoski.

He is traveling to the United States on January 18, where, among other things, he will seek support for the European integration from the strategic partner. He said many meetings and conversations with officials from the Washington administration are on the agenda.

“In addition to Brussels, Washington is extremely important for us as a country and for us as a Government. From what has been agreed so far, I will indeed have quality meetings with officials from the Washington administration and I expect to attract their attention and have them look at the Balkans with a different lens. We must first attract attention regionally, i.e. the lens of Washington should look at us as a region, not as a unit in that region. Yes, an important unit, a natural crossroads, the heart of the Balkans, but still if we look at the Balkans as a whole, as a region, then through the lens of Washington we can see things more clearly and I want to present all of that there, what are the advantages that we as a small, beautiful country in the heart of the Balkans offer, but also what are the challenges for the region,” says Mickoski.

Regarding the minimum wage, Mickoski says the increase will be made in line with regulations, with the wage reaching over Mden 24,000, while adding that if employers and workers decide on a larger increase, they can easily intervene in the law and the Government will accept it. The issue will be discussed at the next meeting of the Economic-Social Council in the course of January.

Despite recommendations coming from the Fiscal Council and the World Bank on increase of the retirement age to 67, the PM says this will not happen. He adds that the pension insurance contributions and VAT will also not increase, as recommended by the World Bank.

“I am absolutely standing by my position, no doubt about this. We are focused on policies that aim to reduce the informal economy and tax evasion, collecting more funds in the budget, while ensuring economic growth. We are now solvent and even posted a surplus in October of about EUR 17 million. We will never draw from the citizens’ pockets because this Government was elected by a vast majority of the citizens and we cannot lose this trust by hypocritical policies but ones that are predictable and long-term,” says Mickoski.

According to him, 2025 will be a year of attracting foreign investments, since negotiations are ongoing with 15 companies. The model of supporting foreign investments will not change much but diversify into sectors that produce added value.

“Our challenge should be the vision for the Macedonian economy in this segment in 10, 15, 20 years from now, because the way in in which we have been attracting FDIs over the past two decades is being exhausted, and we should now find ways to diversify it,” says Mickoski.

On the historic investment that has been recently mentioned, the PM says they are in final talks with a company from a powerful EU member-state, noting it is worth between EUR 350-360 million, operating in the sector of advanced technologies, namely battery production.

 

Ana Cvetkovska

Photo: Darko Popov

Video: Aslan Vishko and Vladimir Rabasovikj

Translation: English Desk