The country has the political will to include the Bulgarian community into our Constitution but we cannot open and change it in a week – it would take some hundred days. Besides this technical issue, there’s also a political one – Bulgaria and the EU need to provide strong political guarantees that these constitutional changes will be Bulgaria’s last condition for lifting the veto, President Pendarovski said in response to a reporter at a joint press conference with European Council President Charles Michel in Ohrid, transmits MIA.
President Pendarovski stressed that neither the government nor the opposition had anything against including Bulgarians living in North Macedonia into the Constitution.
“We are only asking for one political and one technical issue to be taken into account. The technicality is that, even when there is political will and a two-thirds majority in Parliament, our Constitution cannot be changed in less than three to three and a half months. It is not technically possible to do this any faster. Even if we started today, it would take us between 95 and 105 days, according to the country’s best constitutional experts,” Pendarovski said, explaining the three stages of amending the Constitution, which would also include an important public debate on why the change was being made.
Additionally, he said, changing a country’s Constitution is a serious matter, which is why North Macedonia needed to make sure this would be the last condition from Bulgaria for lifting its veto.
“This is why we ask for strong political guarantees from the EU, not only from Sofia,” Pendarovski said. “We ask for guarantees that this will be the last Bulgarian demand regarding this problem.”
Asked if including this request into the negotiating framework would sufficiently guarantee that Bulgaria would have no other demands, the President said if the negotiating framework stated that this was the last Bulgarian demand regarding the issue, “we won’t have a problem with that.”
“We in the Balkans have been burned many times,” Pendarovski said. “All of us have had a turbulent history and, most often, political rhetoric is not enough for us. It is better to have something on paper, as well.”
