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EU-MACEDONIA-MONTENEGRO-PARLIAMENT
EU must heed ‘warning’ of Macedonia vote: Montenegro
STRASBOURG, France, Oct 2, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – The referendum in Macedonia
was a warning for the EU of the threat posed by anti-European forces in the
Western Balkans, Montenegro’s President Milo Djukanovic said Tuesday.
On Sunday, more than 90 percent of Macedonians who turned out to vote in
a referendum backed a change to their country’s name that would clear the
path to their joining the EU and NATO.
But turnout was very low, amid calls from nationalists for a boycott.
“I hope that in Brussels and elsewhere, the result of the Macedonian
referendum can be understood as a wake-up call and a final warning that we
need to carry out a much deeper analysis of our relationship with enlargement
policy,” Djukanovic said in an address to the European Parliament plenary
session in Strasbourg in eastern France.
“Further enlargement (of the EU) is crucial for the Western Balkans and
for Europe,” he said.
Djukanovic spoke after Macedonian voters approved changing the country’s
name to “North Macedonia”, in a referendum that was marred by an extremely
low turnout, with only a third of the electorate casting ballots.
“I have the impression that the pro-European enthusiasm that followed the
fall of the Berlin Wall is stumbling a bit… In the Western Balkan states we
are hearing conflicting messages from the rest of Europe about the pace at
which enlargement should take place,” he said.
The hesitation on enlargement “fuels the illusions of a number of
backward actors… who continue to dream of recomposing the entire region and
building and expanding states on a nationalist basis.”
“The referendum in Macedonia is a striking illustration of the problem I
am talking about,” he argued, saying that the consultation “was not well
enough prepared.”
Approving the new name has been seen as a condition for an EU accession
process for Macedonia that Brussels has agreed to engage next year.
But existing accession talks with Serbia begun in 2014 and Montenegro in
2012 have bogged down.
Many of the EU’s historic member states are holding back because of
difficulties they feel they have encountered with Poland, Hungary, Romania
and Croatia, whose accessions they consider to have been too rapid.
BSS/AFP/RY/1933 hrs