Hours after the European Union made a historic decision to grant candidate status to Ukraine and Moldova last week – a move that could open the door to EU membership – lawmakers Bulgarians recalled how long and winding the road will be.
Bulgaria’s parliament voted last week to lift its own two-year veto on membership talks with neighboring North Macedonia after apparently reaching an agreement on the country’s terms of membership. North Macedonia has been a candidate for EU membership since 2005, but its accession process has been continuously hampered. Among the most vocal objections is Greece’s veto over the country’s name, which was changed from Macedonia to the Republic of North Macedonia in 2019 following a historic 27-year dispute between the two nations. Shortly after, Bulgaria introduced a veto in 2020 due to another long-running dispute over history and language.
The back and forth over North Macedonia’s EU membership is a message to potential new member states that while Brussels is open to new countries, not everyone in the neighborhood is. All EU enlargement decisions require the unanimous approval of member states, making the enlargement process hostage to history, language and regional rivalries. Since the 1995 enlargement for Austria, Finland and Sweden, the accession process has become longer and more complicated, the case of the Western Balkans being the most pronounced.
Hours after the European Union made a historic decision to grant candidate status to Ukraine and Moldova last week – a move that could open the door to EU membership – lawmakers Bulgarians recalled how long and winding the road will be.
The Bulgarian parliament voted last week get up her own two years vetoed membership talks with neighboring North Macedonia after apparently reaching an agreement on the country’s terms of membership. North Macedonia is a candidate for EU membership since 2005, but its accession process has been continuously hampered. Among the most vocal objections is Greece’s veto over the country’s name, which has been amended from Macedonia to the Republic of North Macedonia in 2019 Next a historic 27-year dispute between the two nations. Soon after, Bulgaria introduced a veto in 2020 because of another long-running feud over history and language.
The back and forth over North Macedonia’s EU membership is a message to potential new member states that while Brussels is open to new countries, not everyone in the neighborhood is. All EU enlargement decisions require the unanimous approval of member states, making the enlargement process hostage to history, language and regional rivalries. Since the 1995 enlargement for Austria, Finland and Sweden, the accession process has become longer and more complicated, the case of the Western Balkans being the most pronounced.
Bulgaria insists that Macedonian identity and language have Bulgarian origins. Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria, has also raised concerns about the alleged repression of Bulgarians in North Macedonia, who count around 3,500. North Macedonia has denied these claims.
Friday’s vote in the Bulgarian parliament on the veto essentially gave the green light for a draft solution drawn up by France. But it’s a conditional green light. Among the list of demands described in the document is an appeal to North Macedonia to recognise the country’s Bulgarian minority in the preamble of its constitution. There is also a requirement this “Nothing in North Macedonia’s EU accession process can be interpreted as recognition by Bulgaria of the existence of a ‘Macedonian language'”, which many Bulgarians reject as a separate language .
Skopje is unlikely to play ball. “What we have are impossible bilateral issues which are a denial of our identity,” said Nikola Dimitrov, former foreign minister of North Macedonia. “Bulgaria has received the right [by the EU] to keep us on a leash during the membership process. This means that bilateral issues will be promoted to European issues such as the rule of law. It shouldn’t be.
Relations between Western Balkan leaders and the EU came to a head on Thursday hours before the announcement on Ukraine and Moldova. In a fiery exchangeAlbanian Prime Minister Edi Rama has accused the EU of promoting a “twisted spirit of enlargement” by allowing Sofia to maintain its veto power.
“The spirit of enlargement has shifted from a shared vision of an entire community to the abduction of individual member states,” he said. Albania, which received candidate status in 2014, had much at stake: the EU gathered its application for membership with North Macedonia, as is the case in the enlargement process.
rama too rang a note of caution to Ukraine and Moldova regarding their expectations of EU membership. “North Macedonia [has been a] candidate for 17 years, if I haven’t lost count, Albania for eight years, so welcome to Ukraine. It is a good thing to grant candidate status, but I hope that the Ukrainian people will not have many illusions about this. In a text message, the Prime Minister said he was relieved by the Bulgarian vote, but described it as “the end of the very beginning”.
Albania is now likely to move on to accession negotiations with the EU while North Macedonia tries to find a compromise. The halting progress, experts say, is needed to show candidate new members that the door to the EU is not locked.
“Now that the EU grants candidate status to Ukraine and Moldova, they must ensure the credibility of the enlargement process in the Western Balkans in order to ensure the credibility of the process with these two countries”, said said Zoran Nechev, lead researcher. at IDSCS, a North Macedonian think tank. “But the process is broken in the Balkans, and I guess they [the EU] wanted to know they could move something.
But Bulgaria’s appeasement set a dangerous precedent for the future of EU enlargement, analysts fear. Not only will this likely further boost nationalist sentiment in North Macedonia and Bulgaria, but it could also set a roadmap for other member states on how to use the enlargement process to settle old scores with the countries neighbors.
“An example could be Hungary vetoing Ukraine’s progress in accession talks on Transcarpathia,” Nechev said, referring to the western part of Ukraine which is home to around 150,000 ethnic Hungarians. . Prior to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in late February, Budapest had threatens to block Kyiv’s NATO membership due to the country’s language law, which granted Ukraine a special status and made secondary schools switch to Ukrainian and teach minority languages in separate classes.
“At the end of the day, this is a Pyrrhic victory for Bulgaria. There is no love lost among the alleged brothers in North Macedonia,” said Dimitar Bechev, from the Oxford School of Global and Area Studies Dimitar Kovacevski, the Prime Minister of North Macedonia, “is in a ‘damned if you do and damned if you don’t’ position,” Bechev said.
Comments are closed.