Skopje, 21 July 2023 (MIA) – Parliament Speaker Talat Xhaferi said Friday that without the constitutional amendments the country will not be able to progress in the Euro-integration process, and he said the country does not need to look for others’ experiences over what failure to adopt them would mean, since it has its own experience with the 2008 NATO Summit in Bucharest and the events that followed afterwards.

“We don’t have to look for others’ experiences, even though there are a lot, we have our own experience from 2008. And of course, the experience shows that as much as there is a dilemma in terms of the current solution, the future solution can only be worse. In 2008 the entire state leadership went to the NATO Summit in Bucharest with the expectation the country would become a NATO member the same evening, but the position there changed overnight and ten years later, now that we have all the information since then, the conclusion is that the subsequent solution was… The idea is to conclude the process with an optimal solution, to add them [the Bulgarian community] to the Constitution and to continue forward, not because of us, as the political structure in power currently, but because of the future,” Xhaferi told MRT in an interview.

Regarding the Committee on Constitutional Issues, Xhaferi said as chair of the Committee he has to provide the required timeframe for debate, but, he said, the pace depends on the debate itself. “If the debate,” he said, “is exhausted, it does not have to last until August 9, as projected.”

Asked about the opposition’s demand for early elections, Xhaferi urged them to submit a proposal for it in Parliament and dissolve it if there are 61 votes in favor.

“It is implicit that for early elections it is necessary first for Parliament to be dissolved, and then elections to be held. It is a political statement to claim that you want elections, while not initiating, because you are probably not confident over the number. Which is why I say that the priority should be placed on our future, and not on the future elections,” said Xhaferi.

Photo: MIA Archive