Skopje, 25 June 2026 (MIA) - Prime Minister Hristijan Mickoski told Parliament Thursday he is convinced all reforms will be adopted within the given deadline, making the country top ranked in the June assessment of EU reforms and resulting in an official decision at the beginning of July releasing more funds for the country as part of the Reform Agenda.

At a Q&A session in Parliament, the Prime Minister said he hopes all challenges are overcome, and the Electoral Code is on the agenda of Parliament’s session on Friday. He asked for constructiveness by the parliamentary groups to ensure the Electoral Code is put to a vote in Parliament on Friday, with the included OSCE/ODIHR recommendations.

Mickoski noted that three out of six Western Balkan countries have not made use of funds from the Reform Agenda.

“Some of these funds remain in a pool and the other countries will use them. We have received unofficial information that we will see an increase to this budget because of our implementation of reforms, but this would have to be decided at the beginning of July,” the Prime Minister said, assessing this as one more recognition of the Government’s efforts to implement the Reform Agenda.

In that way, he said, we will ensure additional funds for the liquidity of the budget and the implementation of programs.

At the session, the Prime Minister also claimed that a neighboring EU member state is “spreading information so that the EU does not assist Macedonia financially”.

“A neighboring country is spreading information so that the EU does not assist Macedonian financially, so that it cuts all funds, because if the EU does assist the country, Macedonia will progress, otherwise if there are no EU funds for the country, then it will face bankruptcy. It will be forced to kneel, beg, and in that way implement that which is being demanded of it,” said Mickoski, adding that he has received the information from multilateral and bilateral meetings, without naming the country.

Referring to the constitutional changes in the context of launching negotiations with the EU, as well as human rights, Mickoski said there is an institution in Europe which determines whether human rights have been violated or not – the European Court of Human Rights.

“That court in Strasbourg has made more than 14 judgments in the past years noting that the human rights of the Macedonian community in Bulgaria have been violated, while it has made zero judgements concerning the Bulgarian community in our country. Then, it would be logical to pose the question which human rights are we discussing? We must conduct a comparative analysis, create arguments, we can’t discuss based on feelings and politicize topics. So, whenever someone asks or states that the constitutional amendments are practically a part of the cluster on human rights, then they probably are uninformed or are trying to politicize the issue,” Mickoski said.

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