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| The name change was to unblock EU talks, but it didn't, courtesy of France (AFP Photo/Robert ATANASOVSKI) |
Skopje (Republic of North Macedonia) (AFP) - North Macedonia's prime minister on Saturday proposed a snap election after the EU blocked the start of membership talks, scrambling what had been the key policy goal of his administration.
After hours
of heated wrangling, European Union leaders on Friday could not agree on
opening Skopje's accession negotiations, chiefly because of opposition from
France.
The move
triggered a wave of anger and disappointment, not just in North Macedonia and
Albania -- whose bid was also put on hold -- but among EU officials and leaders
who had lobbied hard to open the talks.
"We
are victims of the EU's historic mistake," Prime Minister Zoran Zaev said
in a televised address, echoing the words of European Commission chief
Jean-Claude Juncker a day earlier, who appeared deeply apologetic for the
decision.
"This
is what I'm proposing: organising quick snap elections where you, citizens,
will decide the road we are going to take," Zaev said. He would meet with
the president and other political leaders on Sunday to discuss the next steps,
he added.
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| North Macedonia's Prime Minister Zoran Zaev said the EU had made a 'historic mistake' in blocking the start of accession talks (AFP Photo/OLIVER BUNIC) |
"I
have no date, all options are open, we will agree on that all together,"
he added.
'Give me
a mandate'
In his
address, Zaev said he shared the "anger and disappointment" of the
people. But he asked them to give him another chance to keep fighting for the
membership bid.
"I
love my country, so I am asking people to give me a mandate to continue along
this path."
Zaev and
his Social Democrats came to power in 2017, ousting the right-wing party of
former strongman Nikola Gruevski, who had dominated the country for a decade.
Since then,
his government has poured all of its political capital into putting North
Macedonia on a path to EU membership.
That
included embarking on a complicated and politically risky effort to change his
country's name, which has been Macedonia ever since it emerged from former
Yugoslavia in 1991.
Adding
'North' to the name was a painful compromise that resolved a decades-old
argument with Greece that was seen as the major stumbling block for any future
EU integration.
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| Zoran Zaev's government has poured all of its political capital into putting North Macedonia on a path to EU membership (AFP Photo/Robert ATANASOVSKI) |
Brussels
had pushed hard for the name change and promised the Balkan state would be rewarded.
While the
deal won North Macedonia an invitation to join NATO, the larger goal of
starting EU talks keeps sliding towards the horizon.
"We
delivered results in the reforms, we resolved the issues with our neighbours,
but they (the EU) did not keep their word," Zaev said in his address.
Apart from
France, all the other member states accepted that North Macedonia had made
enough progress on reforms to start the negotiations.
Yet French
President Emmanuel Macron refused to budge from his position that the entire
accession process must first be reformed before opening the door to new
members.
The issue
is now on hold until next spring.
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| Prime Minister Zoran Zaev and his son Dushko cast their ballot for a referendum to re-name their country North Macedonia on September 30, 2018 (AFP Photo/ DIMITAR DILKOFF) |
"This
is just not fair, what France did, what the EU did," said Vladimir
Kostovski, a 28-year-old in Skopje.
Velko
Velinov, a 29-year-old legal assistant, shared the frustration.
"They
made us change our name for zero, for nothing. Zaev did that and now he is
gonna lose elections," he told AFP.
All of the
Western Balkan countries aspire to someday join the European Union, but
progress has been slow and is increasingly threatened by the waning appetite
for enlargement among some member states.
The EU's
failure to follow through for North Macedonia is a "disastrous" blow
to the bloc's credibility in the region, said James Ker-Lindsay, a Balkans
expert at the London School of Economics.
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