Fule strongly doubts FYROM’s commitment and democratic institutions

in FYROM news / by D-Mak / on May 10, 2013 at 7:05 pm /

The European Commissioner responsible for EU Enlargement, Stefan Fule sent another indirect message to FYROM concerning the country’s European integration . Utrinski vesnik comments that while Fule strongly doubts FYROM’s commitment and democratic institutions, on the other hand, Gruevski said he was strongly confident that the country should be set a date for launching membership negotiations. He added that FYROM was impatiently waiting to contribute to the European idea.

Commissioner Fule was in fact the second official Thursday who told FYROM it was its turn to take action considering that BDI leader Ali Ahmeti received the same message in Washington earlier. In his interview with Radio Free Europe, Fule says in no uncertain terms that FYROM’s progress depends on the implementation of the March agreement and the fact that the deal has not yet been put into practice made him question FYROM’s democratic capacity.

“It depends on FYROM whether it is set a date for opening membership negotiations at the EU summit in June. We have done all in our power to back this processes. We came with the idea of conducting a dialogue at a high level, which went underway last year and has since yielded good results. However, at the same time, that misfortunate incident occurred on 24 December. The EU took action and helped resolve the political impasse brokering a deal between the political parties. I am, above all, concerned that this agreement has not yet been fully implemented. The key element is the establishment of the inquiry committee to investigate the event. Considering the committee has not been setup yet, I wonder what that says of the power of the democratic institutions in that country,” Fule says in his interview.

Earlier, in a statement made on the occasion of 9 May, Europe Day, he emphasized that all countries in the region have an open EU perspective yet they need to demonstrate genuine commitment and make effort to introduce European standards and values.

“Croatia is soon going to become the 28th member, while ‘the waiting room of the Western Balkans’ is still far from empty. There are certain encouraging results in some other parts of the Balkans as well. Serbia and Kosovo have recently reached a historic deal and Montenegro is also moving forward in the process of accession. The perspective of European integration remains open to all countries of the region but the EU accession is not a free ride,” Commissioner Fule said, adding that this perspective was real only to those truly interested in accepting the EU principles.