‘Meta’ has learned that Macedonia’s progress report on the country’s integration to the EU, will receive a recommendation for negotiations.
The recommendation, according to senior government sources, was not seen as controversial, especially since the implementation of the Przhino Agreement had already started and the selection of a Special Public Prosecutor reached its deadline on time. However, the report, which will contain remarks made by Reinhard Priebe, and as we soon discovered, were not kind remarks regarding problems that passed in the last several years.
From sources familiar with the preparation of the report, we learned that this year, the negative issues will be the prominent political pressure on the judiciary, the politicization of the administration, issues with the media’s right to free speech, anti-corruption and the events of December the 24th of 2012, which are most likely to be associated with the blockade of the Oversight Committee Work of the Security and Counter Intelligence Agency
However, the draft report is still in preparation, so there may be possible changes to its content.
EU Commissioner for European Neighbourhood Policy and Enlargement Negotiations, Johansson Hahn during his visit to Skopje, said that in Macedonia the spirit for European integration had been revived, but said it was unlikely that negotiations would start soon, especially because the crisis is not yet over, and the name dispute is still not resolved.
“ I am pragmatic. We must go step by step, the crisis is not completely finished. If the agreement is implemented, we will do everything to convince EU member states to begin negotiations. However, this sort of thing simply does not take a few months” – said Mr Hahn during his visit to Skopje.
