The Diplomat
The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Arancha González Laya, received yesterday in Madrid the Deputy Prime Minister for European Affairs of North Macedonia, Nikola Dimitrov, to whom she conveyed Spain’s support for his country’s accession to the EU.
“Foreign Minister Arancha González Laya receives in Madrid the Deputy Prime Minister for European Affairs of North Macedonia, Nikola Dimitrov, during his visit to Spain accompanying Prime Minister, Zoran Zaev”, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs informed through its Twitter account.
At the meeting, the minister “has expressed Spain’s support for North Macedonia’s accession to the EU” and offered Nikola Dimitrov “the support and experience of Spain to advance the process, in areas such as the judicial system, the rule of law, the green agenda or digitization, among others”, it added.
On March 18, Arancha González Laya expressed in Madrid to her North Macedonian counterpart, Bujar Osmani, Spain’s wish that negotiations for the entry of North Macedonia into the EU begin “before the summer” because “the future of North Macedonia is in the EU”, and warned, therefore, that it would be “useful” to find a solution to the current identity conflict between this country and Bulgaria so that the process could be unblocked.
EU member states gave the green light to start negotiations in March 2020, but the process has been stalled since last December because of Bulgaria’s decision to veto North Macedonia’s entry into the European Union. Behind this conflict lie identity differences between the two countries. The North Macedonians claim their language and history as their own, while the Bulgarians claim that the language is a dialect of Bulgarian and that the two countries shared the same history until well into the 20th century. This is not the first identity problem faced by the former Yugoslav country, which was forced to add the expression “Northern” to its name to avoid Greece’s veto.
