Osmani: Macedonia delivers reforms as promised nine months ago

Deputy PM in charge of EU integration Bujar Osmani held Thursday in Brussels a meeting with High Representative of the EU for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Federica Mogherini, in which he presented Macedonia’s progress after implementing the 3-6-9 Plan and lifting the remaining political hurdles on its path to EU membership.

“I bring good news from Macedonia. As we promised nine months ago, we have delivered reforms in time for the European Commission in its progress report to positively assess our achievements,” Osmani said in the meeting, the Secretariat for European Affairs (SEA) said in a press release.

The Deputy PM pinpointed the adequate application of the 3-6-9 Plan, whose implementation ends with the release of the EC progress report on April 17.

“Part 3 of the 3-6-9 Plan was crowned with the organization of fair, free and credible elections in November 2017, which was acknowledged by OSCE/ODIHR in its report, and whose findings were also verified by the EU Delegation to Skopje,” stated Osmani.

Recently, he said, the government has prepared numerous strategies and key reform-oriented laws with most of them being passed in Parliament in a transparent process that has included the opposition, the civil sector and the public.

“At the moment, MPs in Macedonia are adopting some of the final reform laws that require endorsement from a two-third majority and over which consensus with the opposition has been secured ,” noted Deputy PM Osmani.

As regards the removal of political hurdles, Osmani emphasized the adoption of the law on languages being ‘a fundamental and the final segment of the legislative part of the Ohrid Framework Agreement.’ He said he hoped the law’s implementation would demonstrate its unifying force for building a strong, stable and prosperous multi-cultural society in Macedonia.

“A historic progress was also made involving our neighbors. We signed the historic friendship agreement with Bulgaria, which was later on ratified in Parliament. We have also significantly improved our communication with Greece,” Osmani said.

He said he expected a solution to the long-standing name dispute with Greece to be reached in the period to come.

Deputy PM Osmani met with the EU foreign policy chief Mogherini on the eve of the EC report on Macedonia’s progress, due to be unveiled on April 17.

During the Brussels visit, Ocmani will also meet Genoveva Ruiz Calavera, Director for Western Balkans at the EC Directorate General for European Neighbourhood Policy and Enlargement Negotiations, as well as Dutch Member of European Parliament (MEP) Hans van Baalen, who chairs the Friends of Macedonia group in the EP.