“The European Union is a major challenge for Macedonia, which has been a candidate for membership for many years. Up to now the start of negotiations has been prevented by a political problem, certainly not a bureaucratic one, but – as I often stated when I was first vice president of the EU Commission, then foreign minister – we cannot consider the European process of unification finished until all the countries of the Balkans will not have become part of the European family". This was stated today in Rome by Franco Frattini, head of the Italian Society for International Organization, as he signed a memorandum of understanding with Gjorge Ivanov, newly re-elected president of the Republic of Macedonia. The agreement provides for the development of joint initiatives aimed at the training of officials and diplomats of the Balkan country by the SIOI.
Recalling that Italy's six-month presidency of the European Union will begin on July XNUMX, Frattini underlined that “all the governments of our country have always affirmed the need to open the doors of the EU to countries such as Macedonia, capable of achieving important not only in relations with Italy, but also within the ambit of the UN and NATO”.
THE MACEDONIAN POLITICAL FRAMEWORK
At the end of April, Ivanov, supported by the conservative Vmro-Dpmne party, won the runoff by a large margin against the Social Democratic candidate Stevo Pendarovski, securing a second term.
Together with the presidential elections, Macedonians also voted for the general elections, the third in the last six years. Vmro-Dpmne emerged victorious from the polls, confirming itself as the country's first party with 42% of the preferences, or 61 parliamentary seats out of 123, only one below the absolute majority threshold. Last Monday the outgoing prime minister, Nikola Gruevski, obtained a new mandate from Ivanov for the formation of the Executive and in the next 20 days he will have to finalize the list of ministers, as well as draw up the government programme.
Meanwhile, the social democratic opposition of SDSM (which obtained 24,9% of the votes) does not recognize the legitimacy of the elections (both political and presidential) and is boycotting Parliament. A protest linked to alleged fraud by the Vmro-Dpmne, accused of various improprieties, from the buying of votes to various forms of pressure and intimidation. Episodes which, however, would have occurred in the months preceding the consultations, since, according to international observers led by the OSCE, the elections respected the required parameters of fairness and correctness.
On the side of the majority, according to the May 2007 Agreement, the government must always be composed of the Macedonian and Albanian parties that have obtained the most votes in their respective districts. The rule was respected both in the 2008 and in the 2011 elections and, if this happens again, Vmro-Dpmne will form a new executive with the historical ally Dui (Democratic Union for Integration), which in the elections placed third with 13,48% of the vote.
About a quarter of Macedonia's 2,1 million inhabitants are ethnic Albanians, and a brief conflict broke out between the two groups in 2001, requiring the intervention of a NATO monitoring contingent.
