Skopje maintains that bilateral issues should be resolved bilaterally and that the negotiating framework should be a multilateral document. Foreign Minister Bujar Osmani said that a separate chapter would not be allowed on bilateral issues, and that historical issues would not be a criterion for moving the process forward. On the other hand, the expert public believes that the French proposal goes below our positions and red lines, and introduces bilateral issues in the negotiating framework, and says that the Government must not remain without expecting that EU member states will protect our negotiation process due to of bilateral disputes, which, for experts, is the wrong strategy.
Meanwhile, in Sofia, President Rumen Radev asked the Bulgarian government to comment on the French presidency’s proposal to unblock the European route to North Macedonia, while Prime Minister Kiril Petkov said on Saturday that at the EU summit in Brussels this week “they will not go with the position of the Government regarding the “French proposal”, but with a decision of the National Assembly of Bulgaria”.
