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Macedonia's accession process to the European Union (EU) has reached an impasse, a report by the European Commission (EC) showed on Wednesday.
In its Enlargement Strategy and Main Challenges 2014-15 published in Brussels, the EU sets out enlargement priorities for the EU in the next year and warns that action is needed to reverse recent backsliding in Macedonia, notably as regards freedom of expression and of the media and the independence of the judiciary.
The EU said there is an urgent need to find a negotiated and mutually acceptable solution to the name issue with its neighboring country Greece.
"It remains essential that decisive steps are taken towards resolving the name issue with Greece. The failure of the parties to this dispute to reach a compromise after 19 years of UN-mediated talks is having a direct and adverse impact on the country's European aspirations." the Commission stated.
Nevertheless, given the cumulative progress Macedonia has achieved, the Commission considers that the political criteria continue to be sufficiently met and maintains its recommendation to open accession negotiations but regrets the backward steps of the past year.
The Commission urges the authorities to take decisive action to address concerns about increased politicisation and growing shortcomings with regard to the independence of the judiciary and freedom of expression so that its recommendation can be sustained in future years.
Brussels is also critical about the lack of political dialogue in the country. Macedonian opposition is boycotting institutions, including Parliament, not recognizing the results from the last parliamentary elections.
For experts, these are alarming signals. Malinka Ristevska Jordanova, president of the NGO European Policy Institute (EPI) said that this Progress Report is extremely critical in all areas, especially in the field of the political criteria for EU accession.
"EU Commissioner for Enlargement Stefan Fule is openly warning that next year we will not have the recommendation to start accession negotiations if we don't change something immediately. Leave the name issue with Greece aside, we have serious backslide in implementing the necessary reforms," Ristevska Jordanova told Xinhua in Skopje on Wednesday.
She pointed out that in order to improve this image, the country has to present sufficient political will to address the marked deficiencies. Her NGO is preparing a detailed comparison in the following days between the last Progress Report and similar documents issued by the EC in previous years.
For Macedonian Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski, it is very important that the country has managed to maintain the recommendation to start accession negotiations with the EU sixth year in a row.
"In spite of all challenges that we face, The European Commission once again decided that we deserve to start negotiations for EU membership. The political criteria are assessed at satisfactory level, there is huge progress in the field of economy, and there are some improvements in the area of judiciary and public reforms. These are all areas that we have worked on intensively in the past year," Gruevski said on Wednesday upon receiving a copy of the Report from the EU ambassador Aivo Orav in Skopje.
The opposition is concerned about the content of the Progress Report. Former Vice-President of the Macedonian government in charge of EU integration affairs and current Deputy President of the opposition Social Democratic Union of Macedonia (SDSM) Radmila Shekerinska says that the document shows the country "is going down a dangerous road".
"The report is dramatically more critical compared to the similar document issued last year. The remarks are much worse than the ones for the other countries in the region. Impasse, government failure, backslide, steps back - these are the words that dominate in only one page of the resume for Macedonia," Shekerinska stated at a press conference in Skopje on Wednesday.
Macedonia is a candidate country to join the European Union since 2005. This is the sixth year in a row that the European Commission repeats the recommendation that the country should start accession negotiations, but so far the European Council has failed to reach a consensus among member states to take next step in the accession process of the country.
Main reason for this is viewed to be the unresolved dispute with neighboring Greece over the name issue. Greece is opposed to the use of the name Macedonia by its northern neighbor, saying that it implies territorial claims to Greece's northern province of the same name.
In the report, Brussels also demanded bigger reforms in several key areas in Macedonia. Enditem.
