Thanks to the Movement for Rights and Freedoms (MRF) effort, Bulgarian parliament voted on Friday (June 24) to support the proposal of the French presidency of the EU for a negotiating framework for Northern Macedonia. With 170 votes in favour, the country’s National Assembly authorised the government to employ the strategy proposed by president Emmanuel Macron of France.
The debate on the issue in the National Assembly was urged by the MRF. The Movement filed a draft decision to parliament approving the French offer. At a meeting in Brussels on Thursday, president Emmanuel Macron personally acknowledged MRF leader Mustafa Karadayi’s support for the move.
The French head of state recognised the stable stand of the MRF on the matter, MRF leader Mustafa Karadayi told the parliamentary session on Friday.
We met with Mr. Macron yesterday. He is also grateful for Bulgaria's plan to lift the veto on Northern Macedonia in order to unshackle the negotiation process, Karadayi said.
There was no pressure exercised on the MRF. This has been our consistent policy for 32 years, the MRF leader said. He pointed out that this is a policy of togetherness, not antagonism.
We from the Movement for Rights and Freedoms are convinced that to have peace, stability and security in the Balkans, we must be members of alliances with common values, such as NATO and the European Union, Karadayi firmly stated.
What the MRF did by filing with the National Assembly the negotiating framework proposed by the French presidency had to be done by the executive, by the Council of Ministers. Regrettably, our assessment of this government is correct - it is the worst, most incapable and most incompetent Bulgarian government for the last 32 years, the MRF leader said.
He clarified why the MRF had to submit the French presidency's proposal as an alternative to the government’s inaction.
For six months, this disastrous government, set up by the behind-the-scenes oligarch, media and energy monopolist Ivo Prokopiev, has failed to come out with any decent position on the issue of the EU membership negotiations of the Republic of North Macedonia, Mustafa Karadayi said.
For that reason, the Movement for Rights and Freedoms rose to the challenge and filed the proposal of the French presidency with the National Assembly and thus triggered the parliament’s effort to deliberate and vote on the issue, the MRF leader explained. He told the members of parliament that as soon as the MRF made the move, its draft was copied by the other parties and submitted to the National Assembly, too. Their aim was to pretend that the approved version was filed by one of the four parties in the ruling coalition, and not by the MRF, Karadayi said.
We are all right with that. It has happened before and on other matters. We do not claim authorship. The crucial thing is to resolve the issue, Karadayi added.
It was the Council of Ministers that had to submit the proposal to the National Assembly. Instead, on June 22, prime minister Kiril Petkov and deputy prime minister Assen Vassilev refused to do it. For that reason, the MRF made the one and only correct move, Mustafa Karadayi explained.
