DESPOTOVSKI: WE DESERVED EU SUPPORT AND FUNDS A LONG TIME AGO
“For too long we sit outside and miss the chances to be better. We can be better like all the others before us who have become better if we get financial support and access to EU funds. 20 years ago, we were more ready to join the EU than Bulgaria and Romania, but they entered the process and negotiated, and in the meantime received financial support. Hence the dissatisfaction and the dilemma about the EU are completely justified and I understand them and they are not fair. I am commenting as a citizen. If we want to go a step further and complete our homework on the constitutional amendments, we must have a concrete political will from the EU that the goal is 2030 and that no additional conditions are required regardless of whether VMRO-DPMNE or SDSM is in power, he said. Jovan Despotovski, director at TIRZ, on a guest appearance in the show “Only the truth”.
According to Despotovski, “the negotiating framework and the position and conclusions of the Council are very clear, and Macedonia is not negotiating with Bulgaria but with the European Union”, and the statement of the Deputy Prime Minister of Bulgaria, Maria Gabriel, is “an expected disappointment”.
“I say it is a disappointment, which is even very politically correct to say, although it deserves a sharper comment. I had the opportunity to personally meet the Deputy Prime Minister of Bulgaria in her capacity as Vice President of the European Commission in charge of digitalization. The statement is a disappointment because firstly, it is deliberately manipulative, it shows that it does not know the negotiation process. Secondly, for someone brought from Brussels to lead a progressive pro-European government in Bulgaria, it is really unnecessary to manipulate the Bulgarian public, which brings unnecessary uncertainty in the context of everything that is happening at the moment with the relations between Macedonia and the EU,” said Despotovski. He also added that “at every next summit, or every next chance we miss, it is expected that there will be this type of statements from the Bulgarian side that are obviously for internal political needs.”
Despotovski also demanded specific responsibility for those institutions that do not perform their functions, which is why we have criticism from both the EU and the citizens.
“You have a set of institutions that don’t work, or are stuck in a time 15 to 20 years ago when things worked differently and because of that they don’t act. You have 80% of the institutions that you don’t even know who manages them, let alone that they (didn’t) work. “Responsibility has a name and a surname, and it should be clearly stated who it is, and he should take responsibility for it,” said Despotovski.
According to him, the key in the next elections is to clearly indicate what was promised and what was not, and to take the next step in order to move towards the set goal.
“The following will be crucial for us -how successfully we will manage to communicate what has actually been done, and until now we have not communicated it, or insufficiently – and we have done it. And to define what we will do in the first 3-6 months of the new mandate. And more importantly – with whom, who are the people who will stand up and implement it. With this approach, I am convinced that we will form the next government,” Despotovski said.