Bulgaria lifts the veto on North Macedonia's EU talks as per French EU Council Presidency proposal

With 170 votes in favour, Bulgaria’s Parliament on June 24 adopted the proposal of "Democratic Bulgaria" party to give a mandate to the Council of Ministers to accept the French EU Council Presidency's proposal on North Macedonia.

The National Assembly confirms the conditions under which Bulgaria can support any step of the European integration process of North Macedonia, namely:

1. Effective implementation of the 2017 Treaty on Friendship, Good-Neighbourliness and Cooperation and the protocols of the meetings of the Intergovernmental Commission under this Treaty.
2. Guaranteeing the rights of Bulgarians in the RNM, including through their inclusion on an equal footing with other peoples in the Constitution of the RNM.
3. Availability of European guarantees on the fulfilment of the conditions under points 1 and 2

To this end, the Government of the Republic of Bulgaria should approve the draft Negotiating Framework and EU Council Conclusions proposed by the French Presidency, subject to the following conditions:

• Refining the text of the draft Council conclusions so as to ensure that Bulgarians are included in the Constitution of the RNM in the provisions where other peoples are mentioned and on an equal footing with these peoples;
• Improve the proposed draft negotiating framework and draft Council conclusions to reflect more clearly that nothing in the EU accession process of North Macedonia can be interpreted as recognition by the Republic of Bulgaria of the existence of a Macedonian language;
• Ensure that good neighbourliness remains a horizontal criterion throughout the EU accession process of the RNM, the fulfilment of which the EC should inform the Council of before each intergovernmental conference;
• The inclusion of a reference to the 2017 Good Neighbourliness Treaty and the minutes of the Joint Intergovernmental Commission meetings in relation to the approval by the EU Council of the common positions for the EU-RNM intergovernmental conferences.

On this basis, and only if these conditions are met, the 47th National Assembly will expect the Council of Ministers to approve the draft negotiating framework at the same time or after the signing of the minutes of the second meeting of the Joint Intergovernmental Commission vis-à-vis the Good Neighbourliness Treaty.

The approval of the decision to lift the veto on North Macedonia was greeted with applause in the plenary.

Immediately after the Pareliment’s decision, the chairman of the "There is Such a People" group, Toshko Yordanov, read a position from his party's leader Slavi Trifonov from the parliamentary rostrum.

"I will speak, but you will hear Slavi. GERB, Democratic Bulgaria , Movement for Rights and Freedoms and “We Continue the Change” just accepted the proposal. We have a new coalition - Peevski, Boyko, Kiril Petkov and Hristo Ivanov are embraced. I made my decision and today it became clear why!" – the position says