Skopje, 10 March 2022 (MIA) – North Macedonia’s government delegation held Thursday in Sofia a successful meeting with their Bulgarian counterparts discussing ongoing activities and future joint projects in the areas of good governance, environment, digital transformation and the rule of law. The delegation included Deputy PM for European Affairs Bojan Marichikj, Deputy PM in charge of Good Governance Policies, Slavica Grkovska, Minister of Environment and Physical Planning, Naser Nuredini, Minister of Information Society and Administration, Admirim Aliti and the General Manager of the Post of North Macedonia, Jani Makraduli. At the beginning of the meeting, Deputy PM for European Affairs Marichikj expressed satisfaction with the communication so far with Bulgarian colleagues. He underlined that he expected proposals and ideas that will give concrete results, for the benefit of the citizens on both sides of the border and for our EU integration process, the Secretariat for European Affairs said in a press release. “Direct communication and sectoral cooperation are great way to deepen relations. Cooperation through exchange of experiences and good practices in key areas to our EU integration process, such as the rule of law, green agenda and digital transformation, are of utmost importance to us. Therefore, I expect projects that will contribute to reforms implementation,” Marichikj said. In the discussion on good governance policies, the Deputy PM Slavica Grkovska and her Bulgarian counterpart Kalina Konstantinova welcomed the excellent start of cooperation in this broad area. Grkovska expressed gratitude to the Bulgarian side for sharing experiences from the Operational Programme Good Governance, which opens a broad field of cooperation between the two countries in the medium and long term. “Both sides defined a series of activities in the upcoming period with a special focus on strengthening cooperation with civil society sector, building public administration capacity and exchanging and sharing experiences in prevention and fight against corruption,” reads the press release. Minister of Information Society and Administration, Aliti, together with his Bulgarian counterpart Bozhidar Bozhanov, e-Government Minister, agreed the two institutions to start cooperating and exchanging experiences in order to develop cross-border electronic services for citizens and joint recognition of electronic identification and trust services. During the meeting, Minister of Environment and Physical Planning, Naser Nuredini, along with his Bulgarian counterpart, Deputy Prime Minister for climate policies and Minister of Environment and Water, Borislav Sandov, signed a two-year programme for implementation of the Agreement on cooperation in the field of environmental protection between the two countries, signed in 2019. Minister Nuredini said that the signing of the programme reaffirms the joint efforts to improve bilateral cooperation between the two countries through the implementation of specific activities for better environmental protection and active involvement in the implementation of joint initiatives. Following the efforts of the two governments, for increased dynamics of cooperation and implementation of joint projects, the directors of the two national postal services signed a Memorandum of Understanding for postal cooperation between Bulgarian Posts EAD and Post of North Macedonia. “The activities that will result from this Memorandum, in the future, will provide better and more efficient postal services to the citizens and the business community of both countries,” General Manager of Post of North Macedonia, Jani Makraduli noted. The next meeting of the working group on European cooperation - green transition, digital transformation and rule of law will take place early April in Skopje.