The French presidency of the EU, which ends today, has no new initiative to lift the Bulgarian veto on the European integration of Northern Macedonia. The government in Skopje claims that they have not yet received a formal proposal to resolve the dispute with Bulgaria and start membership talks, and in Sofia, however, there has been silence since parliament last week accepted a "French proposal" and voted no confidence in the government. Kiril Petkov.

According to the MIA correspondent from Brussels, the French diplomats at the EU headquarters are not aware of a new initiative to resolve the dispute between Sofia and Skopje after the visit of the Macedonian delegation to Bulgaria.

The process is entirely in the hands of Sofia and Skopje, and partly in Paris, primarily with French President Emmanuel Macron, whose proposal was rejected last week by Northern Macedonia.

The Macedonian government claims that it has not received an official document so far and has outlined its red lines: clear protection of the Macedonian language, Macedonian identity, the Constitution, the protocol, history.

The Prime Minister Dimitar Kovacevski yesterday at the parliamentary session on parliamentary issues, repeated that no ce acceptable ideas who do not make clear protection of the Macedonian language, Macedonian identity and it is not acceptable for bilateral issues to be included in multilateral negotiations with the EU.

- Historical issues should not and can not be criteria for a negotiating framework of the Republic of Northern Macedonia with the EU, nor for any another organization. And secondly, negotiations with the European Union must begin with an intergovernmental conference, before the constitutional amendments can be initiated in order to introduce the Bulgarians, the Montenegrins, the Croats to become part of the Preamble. Third, both the EU and Bulgaria will provide guarantees that there will be no further conditions regarding our EU accession process, underlined Kovacevski.

If an understanding of these positions is reached, Skopje is ready to engage in talks with EU partners.

The media reported that a Macedonian delegation visited Sofia on Monday, but no one announced concrete results after the meetings.

A meeting of EU ambassadors was held in Brussels yesterday. There is no information that Bulgaria and Northern Macedonia were on the agenda. A diplomatic source from an EU member state told MIA that they had not heard of a new French proposal.

The ball, according to the EU, is in the hands of Skopje and Sofia. If the two sides manage to reconcile, the EU and the French presidency would be ready for a new attempt, but the chances seem very small given that there is no progress between the two sides, and there is no time, because from tomorrow the EU presidency will be taken over by the Czech Republic. If no last-minute progress is made, the issue will be transferred to the Czech presidency.

President Stevo Pendarovski and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz discussed European integration and the Bulgarian blockade at the NATO Summit in Madrid yesterday. A statement from Pendarovski's cabinet said only that strong and significant support from Germany for our European integration and the opening of accession negotiations with the EU remained. Nothing is mentioned in the statement about the French proposal or any other solution.

It is impossible to resolve the dispute with Sofia until the end of the French presidency, according to the leader of the opposition VMRO-DPMNE Hristijan Mickoski. According to him, the demands of official Sofia are too maximalist and he is happy that Skopje rejected the French proposal.

- There is no progress for the simple reason that the demands of official Sofia are so maximalist that even for those who are there and negotiate on behalf of the citizens are not acceptable. The demands are so maximalist that they are out of common sense and out of all European values, said Mickoski.

He said that their position as a political party is precise, which is that there are no language negotiations and no footnotes are acceptable.

The director of the Institute for European Policies - EPI, Simonida Kacarska believes that nand the last On the day of the French presidency, it is a miracle to expect some agreement on the differences between Northern Macedonia and Bulgaria regarding France's proposal to lift the veto and unblock the country's European integration.

- It is unlikely that in one day we will be able to make a key breakthrough in terms of "ironing out" the differences due to the documents that were adopted in the Bulgarian Parliament and our red lines. I expect the Czech presidency to take over if we do not see a miracle, but probably with less intensity than what the French presidency did. In the Czech Republic, I think that the primary focus is Ukraine, as we know, probably the Summit that was supposed to be for the Western Balkans from what are the latest announcements is that it will be for Ukraine, said Kacarska.

France ends its six-month presidency of the Council of the EU today. The Czech Republic will take over the EU presidency on 1 July. Earlier this month, the government in Prague announced the priorities of its presidency, which did not outline European Union enlargement to the Western Balkans.