Erwan Fouéré, Associate Senior Research Fellow, Centre for European Policy Studies, Brussels, Belgium on the panel “Countering Authoritarianism” at the Conference “Defending Democracy and Human Rights”, December 12, 2024, Skopje.
There is no doubt that we have been part of the complacent in the European Union on the protection of the rule of law, democracy and fundamental freedoms, principles that we took for granted for far too long, are being tested like never before. The rise of political parties that espouse far right populist agendas are an increasing threat to the basic principles and values that are the foundation stones of European integration. The EC should have suspended Orban’s party a long time ago.
When we talk about candidates, we know that the People’s Party is protecting the former Prime Minister of North Macedonia who is accused of corruption. We see negative things, so that the negative things do not continue to happen to the enlargement and the success of the negotiations. The EU should be committed to ensuring that all countries respect the rule of law. It took the EU a long time to take measures against member states that do not respect the rule of law, which is why Viktor Orban tried with everything in his power to push it as far as possible before the Commission took action. Orban tried to undermine them and showed how much he does not respect the EU institutions.
The EU now needs to make up for lost time to restore its reputation. We see that we have annual reports on each candidate country. It amazes me that some EU leaders travel to Serbia and praise Vučić, while his government is increasingly arresting representatives of the civil society who criticize. In this way, Serbia will never respect European values.
I would like to highlight one role of civil society. We all know that it is a security element in the control of the government. The new European Commissioner Marta Kos was very clear when she said that she would do everything in her power to ensure that governments respect civil society organizations. I hope that the new commission will turn a new leaf.
Regarding the freedom of media, in North Macedonia, there are examples of journalists being attacked and criticized on social networks simply for reporting differently, and some have even been imprisoned.
It is clear that North Macedonia is facing some difficult challenges with regard to its accession process and not least the issue of ongoing bilateral dispute by Bulgaria.
I ask the question to the commissioner last week and she was verry clear, she said that it is the desire and her wish that bilateral dispute to not impede the accession process. She admitted that commission has not been so successful as would wish in preventing bilateral dispute from undermining the accession process and also undermining the credibility of the EU.
Imposed solution are not ones which guarantee long term reconciliation. The agreement was presented and I think it will be important for the government to continue on tis path to try to resolve this problem, but it is quite clear that bilateral dispute must be dealt with separately from accession process. If there aloud to impede accession process, if we aloud history and identity and other such issues to enter the accession process, than the accession process to the EU will be a failure, and it is absolutely vital that the European commission set separate mechanism to deal with this bilateral dispute and to find a common solution that will not impede but promote the reconciliation in the region.
Another point that the commissioner said which was part of the commissioner statement to promote the reconciliation again admitting that not enough had been done in this respect and now this will be one of the important priorities of the EC in the region.
Regard to the media, and the report of the EC mention that, in resent progress report for North Macedonia mention the various number of the texts that have being perpetrated, verbally and also I understand physically against journalists, and also social media is been used by government supporters ant to undermine the credibility of journalist were just fulfilling their professional duties and again, it is important the government do everything possible to prevent this happening. Accepting criticism should be novel part of democracy, like in Serbia we see government wouldn’t accept that.
There is a lot to be done in North Macedonia in the accession process, the rule of law, corruption are still terrible problem, as we seen in the latest US declaration on the black list, this shows that the government need to do much, much more on these issues on the journey toward European Union.
Camera: Atanas Petrovski/ Igor Chadinovski
Editing: Arian Mehmeti
CONFERENCE, FULL VIDEO, Streamed live on December 12, 2024:
https://youtube.com/live/1f2Eo1ZXEQ0
PHOTO ARCHIVES: #DefendingDemocracy, Panel 1: Democracy under Siege
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#DefendingDemocracy, Panel 2: The Rise of Far-Right Nationalism
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#DefendingDemocrcy Panel 3: Countering Authoritarianism
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#DefendingDemocracy conference, Panel 4: Commitment to democracy
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#DefendingDemocracy Conference (overall)
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#DefendingDemocracy – workshop and meeting with the press
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#DefendingDemocracy PRESS CONFERENCE
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