Macedonian President Gordana Siljanovska-Davkova says that legal and political guarantees from the European Union are necessary to continue the country’s European integration process, assessing that the externally imposed constitutional amendments create new ethnic divisions and deviate from the fundamental principles of European law.
In an interview with the national broadcaster MRT, Siljanovska-Davkova stressed that the European Union must respect its own constitutive acts that guarantee the national and cultural identity of states and peoples, emphasizing that issues related to minorities are not part of European law or the Copenhagen Criteria.
“The EU does not have a common minority policy. There are EU member states that have not signed, two, France and Greece, nor the Framework Convention on Minorities, nor the Convention for Regional or Minority Languages. If that is not part of European law, and it is not part of the Aquis, then it has nothing to do with the Copenhagen Criteria, and it is incredible that you are setting conditions of this type here. The EU Treaty, the Lisbon Treaty, the Charter of Fundamental Rights, they are the sources of European constitutional law and the practice of the Court in Luxembourg. It is written down, I did not write it, but they wrote it down, that the EU will respect the national and cultural identity of every nation and state, because it is unity in diversity,” said President Siljanovska-Davkova.
Regarding the negotiating framework and relations with Bulgaria, the Macedonian head of state assesses that there is a possibility of providing political and legal guarantees from Brussels. She notes that Bulgaria’s policy towards the Macedonian issue is continuous and has long been established, and assesses that the country in the past entered negotiations unprepared and accepted obligations without sufficient analysis of the consequences.
Siljanovska-Davkova pointed out that even in publications and documents from 2018, Bulgarian positions related to Macedonian issues were stated, including requests for explicit enumeration in the Preamble of the Constitution.
“That is why we are urging for some kind of guarantees. It is not true that there are none. There can be a political guarantee from the European Council itself. There can be a legal guarantee from the legal service of the European Council, what Mr. Waitz is requesting today. And thirdly, we can make a law ourselves and pass it, but the red lines do not work. That is why I say, the European Union must also do something,” President Siljanovska-Davkova underlined.
