With 68 votes, the 120-seat parliament voted in favor of the deal. The opposition MPs did not participate in the vote and left the room. “Today we are opening a new perspective for our country…from today we are moving with accelerated steps towards joining the EU family,” Prime Minister Dimitar Kovacevski told a news conference after his cabinet approved the parliament’s conclusions. government and the EU will take place on Tuesday. Sign up now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com Register The agreement proposes amending the constitution of North Macedonia to recognize a Bulgarian minority. The proposal does not require Bulgaria to recognize the Macedonian language. In return, Bulgaria will allow its Western Balkan neighbor to start accession talks with the EU. After the deal was approved, ruling party MPs unfurled EU and North Macedonian flags. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who traveled to Skopje and urged lawmakers on Thursday to vote for the deal, said the vote “paves the way for the rapid opening of accession negotiations.” Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama, whose country has been delayed because the EU has linked its progress to that of North Macedonia, said an Albanian delegation would travel to Brussels on Monday to start accession talks. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken welcomed the vote, saying Washington recognized “the difficult trade-offs contemplated in this compromise, which recognizes and respects the cultural identity of North Macedonia and the Macedonian language”. The leader of the largest opposition party VMRO-DPMNE, Hristijan Mickoski, whose party has protested the deal since early July, said “nothing was finished”. He added that his party would not support constitutional changes that require a two-thirds vote.Bulgaria’s parliament lifted its veto on Macedonia-EU talks last month. This also sparked protests in Bulgaria and contributed to a no-confidence vote that toppled the government. North Macedonia, a former Yugoslav republic, has been a candidate for EU membership for 17 years, but approval for talks was blocked first by Greece and then by Bulgaria. Sign up now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com Register Report by Fatos Bytyci and Ognen Teofilovski. Editor: Christina Fincher Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
