EU Commissioner for Neighborhood Policy and Enlargement Negotiations Olivér
Várhelyi told Tuesday’s press conference that he will discuss with the Macedonia’s
authorities on ensuring sufficient time for campaigning and freedom of elections.
I have seen the announcement of the government their intent to hold elections early
July and I need to look into the details and at this stage what I can tell you is that free
and fair elections would have to be hold with sufficient time for campaigning and
sufficient possibilities for all political parties to campaign. We need to also look into
how under the COVID-19 regimes this can be implemented. So, this is something
that we will take up with the Macedonia’s authorities for sure, because it is very
important to ensure fully fairness and freedom of elections, Várhelyi said.
Várhelyi said that the negotiating frameworks for Macedonia and Albania will be
published in “a couple of days” and that the European Commission’s goal is to get
negotiating frameworks on the table of the Council of the European Union hopefully
next week.
The European Commission’s enlargement package has been postponed until
autumn.
