Skopje, 18 October 2024 (MIA) – Rushed moves is a bad thing, we’re still making analyses, Prime Minister Hristijan Mickoski stated Friday when asked about a letter expected to be sent to the EU containing solutions to unblock the country’s EU integration process.

“I ask for a little patience. Rushed moves is always a bad thing. We need a clear head, to sleep on it before making the right decision,” he said.

Mickoski said he had a busy agenda in the coming period, including a trip in Austria for meetings with top officials before the summit of the European Political Community in Budapest in November. “If we manage to meet our goal this way, I wouldn’t rush things.”

Asked to comment on remarks by Bulgarian Vice President Iliana Iotova, who called on Macedonian authorities to have “a deeper understanding of the European values”, Mickoski lamented the fact that there are EU member countries that don’t respect European values.

Mickoski said that his country has been honoring human rights rulings, including those by the Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, reiterating that there have been 14 rulings about the Macedonian community in Bulgaria.

“I call on those giving us advice to also advise the Bulgarian authorities to allow the Macedonian community to be able to register non-governmental organizations. We don’t demand to be included in the Constitution. This is something they are able to do, as far as I know, Bulgaria is a signatory of the resolution on the protection of human rights,” the PM stated. 

At a roundtable discussion in Kyustendil, titled “Bulgarians in the Balkans beyond the border after 1878”, Bulgarian Vice President Iliana Iotova said that EU accession talks will not be finished if any country believes that human rights of representatives of different nations and ethnicities, are not respected.

“Aggression is unforgivable, not only verbal, but also when the violence masks a persistent and deeply flawed concept and, even more, a failure to implement international commitments already made", Iotova said, adding that she was referring to North Macedonia, "where, unfortunately, in recent years - instead of good neighborliness - it is a paradox, but it is a fact, instead of a signed treaty and its implementation, which bears the resounding words 'Good Neighborliness' in its name, we seem to be going in the opposite direction". 

Bulgaria’s Vice President said it is “unacceptable for a country to tolerate disregard of human rights, the trampling of the right to expression, to say who you are and where you come from and what your background is.”

Representatives of the Bulgarian communities from Macedonia, Albania, Greece, Kosovo, Romania, Turkey and Serbia also took part in the event. 

MIA file photo