The European Parliament is set to vote Thursday on the resolution of the European Commission and the European Council over Macedonia's progress, with MEPs urging for the opening of the country's EU accession talks at Wednesday's debate, MIA reports.

Irish Minister of State for European Affairs Lucinda Creighton and Enlargement Commissioner Stefan Fule reiterated the European Council's December summit and the Commission's spring report conclusions, saying reforms have resumed after the political crisis, but the March 1 agreement remains to be implemented, along with the name row settlement.

EP Rapporteur for Macedonia, British MEP Richard Howitt, also urged Skopje and Athens to make progress and solve the name issue.

"EU leaders on the other hand should not use this matter for new postponement of Macedonia's EU accession talks", he said.

Vast majority of MEPs supported the resolution on Macedonia, which urges the Irish EU Presidency to carry out intensive diplomacy in order to achieve satisfactory outcome and a decision for start of Macedonia's accession negotiations by the end of June.

Visas will be reintroduced, visas will not be reintroduced – this is the dilemma in the European Union that is hard to follow from Macedonia after certain member-states since 2009 began to demand establishment of a safety mechanism which will reintroduce the visas for the citizens from Western Balkan due to the large asylum demands, Utrinski Vesnik writes. Although publically all apostrophized countries state that they do not demand reintroduction of visas but “establishment of a safety mechanism,” the topic cannot be closed regardless of the fact that the European Parliament’s Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs already categorically said “no”. On Monday, Deutsche Welle reported news that with a letter, the Ministers of Interior of Germany, Austria, the Netherlands and Great Britain demanded the topic to be put on the daily agenda at the June meeting of the Council of Justice and Home Affairs.

Macedonia is once again on EU Enlargement Commissioner Stefan Fule’s route march. He is to pay a visit to Macedonia on 1 June to, as he announces, participate in the South-East European Cooperation Process in Ohrid. It is expected for him to use his stay in Ohrid to monitor the developments on the Macedonian political scene and the fulfillment of the obligations from the spring report which are the basis for the country to get set with a date for start of EU negotiations, daily newspaper Utrinski Vesnik writes.

Nano Ruzin, University Professor and Ambassador, considers that the announced visit is Fule’s last attempt to force the domestic political factors to do something ahead of the EU Summit in June. He points out that the EU Commissioner insisted on all solutions and that he had a multidimensional approach toward things. From this standpoint, Ruzin expects a warning, but also encouragement from Fule.

Vlado Kambovski, President of the Macedonian Academy of Sciences and Arts and University Professor, was proposed by President Gjorge Ivanov as chairman of the inquiry committee that should investigate the incident of 24 December 2012 at the meeting of the secretaries general of VMRO-DPMNE and SDSM, Kiril Bozinovski and Andrej Petrov, at President’s Ivanov Office Thursday. VMRO-DPMNE immediately replied they accepted the proposal, while SDSM officials said that had already discussed this proposal and voiced their view that Kambovski was unacceptable to them considering he served as a minister in a government led by VMRO-DPMNE, which does not guarantee that his work will be unbiased. SDSM also reminded Thursday that they had proposed Constitutional Law Professor Svetomir Skarik yet VMRO-DPMNE refused that proposal.

The General Affairs Council (GAC) of the European Union is going to decide at its session next Tuesday in Brussels whether to appeal to the European Council to decide to open membership negotiations with the Republic of Macedonia at its summit on 27 and 28 June.

Considering the latest impasse in the implementation of the Belgrade-Pristina agreement and bearing in mind that only Serbia and Macedonia are EU candidate member states, the whole discussion Tuesday is expected to focus on Macedonia’s European integration, the state news agency MIA reports.

According to unofficial information, the Greek and Bulgarian ministers of foreign affairs are going to attack Macedonia with the argument that “Macedonia has no democratic capacity and does not meet the Copenhagen criteria” considering the inquiry committee that should shed light on the events in Parliament on 24 December has not yet been set up.

- Macedonian Foreign Minister Nikola Poposki on Tuesday in Copenhagen met with his Danish counterpart Villy Sovndal who reaffirmed Denmark’s political and technical support for Macedonia’s Euro-integration. Following the meeting, Poposki stated that it is clear to Denmark that the established norms should be respected, namely the one that meets the criteria should get what it deserves. Poposki also held meetings with Minister for European Affairs of Denmark Nikola Wammen and discussed about the progress of Macedonia and the expectations from the June EU Summit.

We appeal to the Greek government to recognize the indigenous Macedonian language and sign and ratify the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages, says the petition with which the Macedonian minority in Greece demands of the state to honor the European rules and standards and to let them use the language they speak in schools and institutions. Although the petition has been online for only a few days, it has already been signed by more than 420 people across the world.

“Not only Macedonians from the diaspora but also everybody supporting us and disapproving of the torture against Macedonians and their language that has been going on in Greece for years are welcome to sign the petition. If we wait for someone else to do this for us, we may never get what we want. And what we want is not something that conflicts with European rules and standards. On the contrary, it is something that Greece is obliged to carry out, such as the singing of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages, Eugenia Natsoulidou, a representative of the United Macedonian Diaspora in Greece, told Dnevnik.

- President Gjorge Ivanov cautioned Sunday that Macedonia is tired of waiting on getting what it deserves from the EU and NATO. In an interview with state agency MIA, he announced that Macedonia has met all requirements and this was confirmed by the last four reports from Brussels. In context to the name issue, Ivanov stressed that Macedonia firmly believes that the process could come to an end only if the UN resolutions, the Interim Accord and the judgment of the International Court of Justice are respected.

EU Enlargement Commissioner Stefan Fule and Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski sent each other Thursday indirect messages concerning Macedonia’s European integration with conflicting tones. While the former strongly doubts Macedonia’s commitment and democratic institutions, the latter said he was strongly confident that Macedonia should be set a date for launching membership negotiations and that the country was impatiently waiting to contribute to the European idea, Utrinski vesnik comments.

Commissioner Fule was in fact the second official Thursday who told Macedonia 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 Macedonia’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 Macedonia’s democratic capacity.

- Parliament Speaker Trajko Veljanoski met Wednesday in Dublin with Sean Barrett, Ireland’s Speaker of the House of Representatives. According to Veljanoski, the relations between the two countries are friendly and without open issues and Ireland has always supported Macedonia in its efforts to become part of the EU. Barrett stressed this support for Macedonia’s Euro-integration but still expressed regret that his country is unable to influence the decisions of other member-states.

Greek officials believe that the Albanian pressure is going to help resolve the name issue, which is wrong. It is with these words that a part of the Greek public explains why the authorities in Athens prefer meeting Albanian politicians from Macedonia while refusing meetings at the highest level, with Macedonian government officials, Dnevnik reports.

The first step in this regard was made by Teuta Arifi, former Deputy Prime Minister for European Affairs, when she met Theodoros Pangalos, Greek Deputy Prime Minister at the time, in Athens, while her successor Fatmir Besimi is set to meet Greek Foreign Minister Dimitris Avramopoulos at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Athens Wednesday. According to Greek diplomatic sources, the meeting is taking place at the Macedonia deputy prime minister’s request.

“Besimi expressed a wish and a readiness for a meeting and Avramopoulos accepted it. The meetings of the representatives of the Ministries of Foreign Affairs at which concrete issues of the process of European integration were discussed resulted from the meeting between Arifi and Pangalos,” the same sources say.

BDI is embarking on a diplomatic campaign seeking a solution to the name issue. This is the general view of BDI leader Ali Ahmeti’s visit to the United States of America and of Deputy Prime Minister Fatmir Besimi’s visit to Greece. Ahmeti is set to meet high-ranking US officials in Washington, possibly even US Vice President Joe Biden, as well as mediator Matthew Nimetz. Besimi, on the other hand, is set to meet Greek Foreign Minister Dimitris Avramopoulos, Nova Makedonija reports.

What can be expected of these visits? Is it real to believe that Ahmeti and his party are capable of propelling this process forward? All analysts agree that not much should be expected yet their individual specific views differ. While according to some the contribution may be small yet significant, according to others there would be no contribution whatsoever.  Does BDI have other goals, too?  What side effects may be expected of the large-scale and expensive effort the party is taking in regard to the name issue? According to analysts, this may promote Ahmeti into a political authority equal to Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski. In other words, he may grow into a factor on which all processes in Macedonia, not just those relating to the interethnic relations and the ethnic rights of Albanians, depend. However, they underline this may be just a side effect, without arguing that this is the true goal behind BDI’s activities regarding the name issue.

- The third World Conference on Interreligious and Inter-civilization Dialogue will be held in Skopje from 10-12 May under the auspices of the Government of the Republic of Macedonia. The organizing of this conference is continuation of the humane vision of late president Boris Trajkovski.

- Albanian Foreign Minister Aldo Bumci is paying an official visit to the Republic of Macedonia upon the invitation of his Macedonian counterpart Nikola Poposki. The focus of the talks is the bilateral talks as well as the joint cooperation in the EU and NATO. During the visit, Bumci is to meet with President Gjorge Ivanov, Speaker Trajko Veljanoski and Deputy Prime Minister Fatmir Besimi.

Zoran Zaev, one of the most serious candidates to succeed Branko Crvenkovski, who officially reigned as leader of SDSM, Macedonia’s largest opposition party, has recently said he offered a new concept and a vision. He also said if he was elected new leader, he would propose Radmila Sekerinska as his deputy. It is this statement that has drawn much public attention bearing in mind that what Zaev suggests is a new way of running the party. According to his visions SDSM should be led by one president and one vice president, or a collective party mini-body, which was particularly popular in the 1980s during former Yugoslavia’s breakup. Upon Tito’s death, Yugoslavia was led by a rotating collective presidency, Nova Makedonija reports.

University Professor Zdravko Saveski says that the manner of management is a practical issue, which should help the party be as efficient as possible. In his view, more important is whether the future leader of the party carries out the genuine idea of social democracy – closeness to the people and offering tangible solutions to social problems.

-    Macedonian President Gjorge Ivanov deemed as very successful his visit to Canada Thursday. From 25 to 28 April, he will be paying a working visit to Arizona, the USA, and take part in the Sedona 2013 Forum, organized by the McCain Institute for International Leadership.

The Hague, Stockholm or Skopje are the three destinations that legal experts point out as venues where a court epilogue may be sought to the four war crime cases of 2001 (NLA Leadership, Mavrovo Construction Workers, Lipkovo Dam and Neprosteno Mass Grave) despite what is known as the authentic interpretation of the amnesty law, which terminated their processing in the Macedonian judicial system, Dnevnik reports.

Both home and foreign experts say that the amnesty is invalid considering war crime cases can never become time-barred nor can they be amnestied.

The United Macedonian Diaspora (UMD) sent a letter to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague five days ago, requesting of the court to take back the cases it returned in 2006 considering the Macedonian judicial system, in their view, lacks capacity and considering these cases need a legal rather than a political closure. On the other hand, Jordan Apostolski, a lawyer accredited in both the ICTY and the International Court of Justice, argues that what are known as the Hague cases may be processed in Stockholm considering that under the Swedish law Swedish courts may process such cases regardless of who committed the war crimes and where.

- Germany will maintain the credibility of the enlargement process following Croatia's accession, German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle and Bundestag officials told Macedonian counterpart Nikola Poposki in Berlin on Wednesday. According to Poposki, at the moment, there is no other obstacle for Macedonia other than Athens’ stance which prevents country’s accession negotiations.

Support for the agreement between Serbia and Kosovo and reserve that something similar may be done in Macedonia are the initial reactions in Macedonia following Brussels’ delight that, finally, two countries in the region, the two most problematic ones for that matter, decided to turn to the future instead of the past, Utrinski vesnik reports. Is this progress going to have any effect on Macedonia? Is it able to give a push to our integration as well? And is it going to be fair if Serbia is allowed to begin membership negotiations before Macedonia is although Macedonia was the first to receive a candidate member state status? Skepticism is the common denominator of both home and foreign analysts, the paper says.

According to Gerald Knaus from the European Stability Initiative, it has long become clear that Serbia will have a European future provided it accepts Kosovo’s independence. Now the country has been afforded that opportunity provided it takes two steps – accepting Kosovo’s independence de facto, which has been achieved with the agreement signed with Pristina, and accepting it de jure on joining the EU, as the end of the process.

- Macedonian Foreign Minister Nikola Poposki who attended Tuesday the NATO meeting in Brussels, responded to his Greek counterpart Dimitris Avramopoulos that it is not a typical approach for Macedonia to find excuses and that this is someone else’s specialty. Previously, Avramopoulos said that Macedonia has failed to implement reforms and is unprepared to join the EU. Within the frames to his visit to Brussels, Poposki realized several meetings with European officials and on Wednesday he is to visit Berlin where he is to meet with German counterpart Guido Westerwelle.

The Council of Ministers of the European Union is going to decide in June whether to accept the recommendation of the European Commission for setting Macedonia a date for launching membership negotiations with the EU. At its meeting in Luxembourg Monday, the Council decided to postpone the decision on Macedonia and dedicate almost the entire meeting to the Multiannual Financial Framework 2014-2012 and the agreement between Belgrade and Pristina.

After the meeting was over, Eamon Gilmor, Irish Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs, and Chairman of the General Affairs Council, said that the reports of the European Commission on Macedonia, Serbia and Kosovo were presented yet no decision or conclusion was adopted.

“With respect to enlargement, our discussion focused on the agreement between Serbia and Kosovo, which is a historic moment not only for these two countries but also for all of Europe. Enlargement Commissioner Stefan Fule presented the reports on Serbia, Kosovo and Macedonia. We only tabled them and are going to take the necessary decisions at the next meeting of the General Affairs Council in June, before the Summit of the European Council,” he said.

-    The second round vote of the local elections was rerun in Centar, Gjorce Petrov and Struga and was held for the first time in Dolneni on Sunday. Andrej Zernovski from the coalition led by SDSM is the new mayor of Centar, Zijadin Sela from PDSH is the new mayor of Struga, Sokol Mitrovski from the coalition led by VMRO-DPMNE has been reelected mayor of Gjorce Petrov and Bose Milosevski from the coalition led by VMRO-DPMNE is the new mayor of Dolneni. The vote was peaceful with mutual accusations between the opposition and the government of election irregularities and with a low turnout.

- Delegation of the Macedonian Government headed by PM Nikola Gruevski arrived late Thursday in Azerbaijan and on Friday he is to hold meetings with President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev and Prime Minister Artur Rasizade.  During the meetings, agreement in the sphere of tax policy will be signed and there will also be a business presentation of the benefits that Macedonia offers foreign investors.

- The Macedonian Government is satisfied with the report issued by the European Commission and Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski said that the report gives hope that in the following months there will be progress in the European integration and a date for start of negotiations in June. According to him, the stance of High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Catherine Ashton, in regards to the name issue, is identical to the one of the Macedonian government – a swift mutually acceptable name solution.  Gruevski denied that Baroness Ashton exercised pressure and said that he only held a general discussion with her where she showed interest for solving the problem.

Following the four successive recommendations to the European Council over the past four years, today the European Commission is sending out one more hoping that membership negotiations with the Republic of Macedonia will be launched in June, said EU Enlargement Commissioner Stefan Fule at the press conference in Strasbourg Tuesday presenting the special report on Macedonia, MIA’s Strasbourg-based correspondent reports.

The report, drafted based on the conclusions of the Summit of the European Council in December, says that progress has been made in all areas covered by the report despite the political crisis since 24 December.

“As requested by the European Council, the EC prepared a report on the implementation of EU-related reforms in the context of the High Level Accession Dialogue as well as the steps taken to promote good neighborly relations and reach a negotiated and mutually acceptable solution to the name issue under the auspices of the UN. The main conclusion of the report is that the implementation of reforms is ongoing and largely back on track after the political crisis of January-February. Relations with neighbors remained good and steps have been taken on the bilateral relations with Bulgaria and Greece,” Commissioner Fule said, adding that the name issue talks under the UN auspices gained a new momentum during this reporting period.

- Foreign Minister Nikola Poposki, who welcomed the release of the European report in Strasbourg, stated that it is an important message to all of our neighbors and especially to all those part of the EU that energy is necessary for building European relations between our countries. According to Poposki, for five years it has been confirmed that the Republic of Macedonia is prepared to launch EU negotiations and this is another proof that we are unjustly held before the start of these talks.

-    Catherine Ashton, EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, is coming to Skopje Tuesday afternoon. Before holding a press conference later Tuesday, she is set to have talks with President Gjorge Ivanov, Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski, BDI leader Ali Ahmeti and SDSM chairman Branko Crvenkovski.

The spring report that EU Enlargement Commissioner Stefan Fule is going to present in Strasbourg on Tuesday afternoon will be realistic and pragmatic, says diplomatic sources in Brussels. They told Dnevnik that the report cannot be referred to as either positive or negative, adding that Commissioner Fule obviously did not leave Skopje happy with his last visit. The most important, according to these sources, is seeing what the reaction from Athens is to this document.

On presenting the report at the European Parliament, a debate by the Members of the European Parliament is not expected. Asked whether the coming visit of Catherine Ashton, EU High Representative on Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, is related to the presentation of the EC report, aiming to accelerate the resolution of the name issue, Brussels officials say that she will be visiting a number of countries in the region and so she is not bringing “anything tangible.”

The Parliament of the Republic of Macedonia and the European Movement of the Republic of Macedonia are holding an international conference – European Integration Through Cooperation of Parliaments, Civil Society and Independent Regulatory Bodies in Southeast Europe – within the framework of the Macedonian Chairmanship-in-Office of the South East European Cooperation Process (SEECP) in Skopje on 15 and 16 April.
 
The conference is expected to foster dialogue and sharing of experience and positive practices of European integration and confirm the willingness and capacity of the Parliament and of the Republic of Macedonia for making an active contribution to regional cooperation.

The European Union is trying to gradually close all issues in the region by the time of holding the European elections next year, analysts say. It is in this context that they see the coming visit of Catherine Ashton, EU High Representatives for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, to Skopje next week, Dnevnik reports.

Macedonian Foreign Minister Nikola Poposki confirmed Thursday Ashton’s visit to Macedonia, saying this was part of the regular communication between Macedonia and the European Commission.

“It is normal communication with the EC following the latest round of the High Level Accession Dialogue. Ashton is focused on the dialogue between Belgrade and Pristina yet I do not believe that that her visit is in any way connected to the process we conduct under UN auspices for resolution of the name issue with Greece,” Minister Poposki said.