Motivated more by criticism and by the threat of losing his reputation, and less by a guilty conscience that in October 2019 blocked the opening of accession negotiations with North Macedonia and Albania, the French president joined the third European attempt to mediate in the dispute between Skopje and Sofia.

Emmanuel Macron played dangerously with the influence of the European Union in the Western Balkans, in order to face, together with the other leaders of the Union, the serious dissatisfaction of the six countries in the region that came out empty-handed from the June summit, at which candidate status was too much for them. awarded to Ukraine and Moldova.

Everyone in the region would agree that the Union made the biggest mistake regarding North Macedonia and Albania, which were included in the same package. Their path was blocked in 2000 by the Bulgarian veto, which conditioned Skopje to demands that deeply undermine its western neighbor's identity issues, from the status of minorities to language. Why the proposal does not have an official translation into Macedonian is not clear.

Since the signing of the Prespa Agreement in June 2018, with which the name dispute was sent to the archive, Macedonia has been following a zigzag line. Bouts of optimism and pessimism alternated constantly. After Macron's blockade, interpreted as the need for the EU to first determine the rules of enlargement and reform them, it was thought that the arrival of Zoran Zaev's government would open the way to the EU, but it turned out that the level of Bulgarian nationalism was too high for compromise. A new bucket of cold water has been poured at the Brussels summit.
After hearing the Albanian prime minister speak openly about the "fraudulent spirit of enlargement" at the summit, Macron realized that his reputation was in question. After much lost time, he finally engaged more decisively. "We've waited too long."

He called on politicians from across the Bulgarian spectrum to support his compromise proposal that would allow the veto to be lifted. "It is their European duty," the French president said.

As recently as May, Bulgarian politicians, including Prime Minister Kiril Petkov, whose centrist coalition has since collapsed, rejected all EU initiatives. "Only the National Assembly has the final legitimacy for the mandate of North Macedonia and this must be perfectly clear to the entire Bulgarian society and to our foreign partners," said Petkov, adding that "the government will not do anything under external pressure."

Then, after the "historic decision", the Bulgarian parliament gave the government the green light to allow North Macedonia to start accession negotiations, but with four conditions: the Bulgarian minority should be recognized in the Constitution of the Republic of Macedonia, there should be no automatic Bulgarian recognition of the Macedonian language, the protocols that determine the relations between the two countries to be included in the negotiation framework of the EU and the European Commission to supervise the implementation of the agreement.

After contacts with both sides, Macron assessed that a compromise solution had been found, but did not specify whether it was the previous proposal of the French presidency with the Union or it was supplemented. Negotiations to "finalize the contract" are pending. If they are successful, they will go before the EU ambassadors, after which the veto would be lifted along with the European guarantees that Sofia is demanding.

They are satisfied in Sofia, which indicates that the initiative is much more favorable for Bulgaria than for North Macedonia. Realpolitik at its best: Bulgaria is a NATO member with access to the Black Sea, which is an important location for the delivery of weapons and equipment to Ukraine. At the same time, it is also a member of the EU.

It is obvious that the Union sympathizes more with its wayward member in order to avoid conflict situations as it has with Hungary and Poland. North Macedonia is less important, which allows the West to increase pressure on Skopje, not on Sofia. It is not just about Macron's proposal. And the Americans expect the government of Prime Minister Dimitar Kovacevski to "lie on flour" according to the "take it or leave it" principle.

The Union says the proposal is in line with Bulgaria's demands, which it says are in line with what North Macedonia can do. Can I?
The authorities first evaluated the proposal as unacceptable. The nationalist opposition VMRO-DPMNE brought demonstrators to the streets of Skopje. Then Prime Minister Kovacevski repeated and announced that the French proposal contains Skopje's remarks and that it represents a "firm basis for building a position". What has changed remains unclear and undocumented, raising growing suspicions that the Government is willing to choose "the worst of the worst". The logic of give and take may provide a short-term solution, but threatens to introduce instability in the long term.

Seen from a distance, the proposal does not guarantee that during the negotiation process, Sofia - encouraged by the support from Brussels - will not come up with new demands. Sofia counts on capitalizing on its mercantile and blackmail capacity.

If Macron gathered Bulgaria around his proposal, he brought discord into Macedonia. The reporter for North Macedonia, Ilhan Kuchuk, can praise the French proposal as the "best" that the two countries can achieve and assure that in the 21st century no one's identity can be taken away, but many in Skopje do not trust the Bulgarian politician.
The ball moves into the Skopje yard. There is a real risk of creating a situation where North Macedonia will be declared a "subversive factor" if it rejects the terms offered by Sofia, which suit Bulgaria more than it had hoped. "Good guys" in Sofia, "bad guys" in Skopje. According to this scenario, Albania will wait some more time to see what will happen, but Tirana does not want to be a Bulgarian hostage, so it is a real possibility that it will ask to separate from North Macedonia and go its own way. The position of Skopje would thereby be further weakened.

The second choice, to accept the proposal to favor Bulgaria, is equally bad because the issue of denial of Macedonian history, language, identity, culture and heritage will surely explode.

There is a third, most realistic option. To seriously discuss the French project as a "transitional compromise" and to convince the West that the solution favoring Bulgaria does not eliminate the problems, but only postpones them. The problem is that Macron and the collection of EU politicians who follow him want to realize their pan-European ambitions now.

For Europeans, form is much more important than substance. In the Western Balkans, they already have conflict situations that they have not been able to solve for decades - Kosovo and Bosnia and Herzegovina - so at any cost they push the dispute between Sofia and Skopje under the carpet by tolerating the blackmailing capacities of Bulgaria, which is currently their partner from first, and North Macedonia from the second row.