“At today’s meeting of the Foreign Affairs Council, we talked about the developments in Central Africa and the Arctic. We also talked about the Middle East and about developments in FYROM.
Regarding the developments in FYROM, I explained in an extensive intervention our experiences with Turkey from 1997 to 1999, when our veto was lifted and Turkey proved to continue to have pending issues on its course towards the European Union. Responding to the argument that, if we didn’t use our veto against FYROM, it wouldn’t have problems today.
I explained that FYROM’s central problem is the fact that it has a lack of a democratic culture of dialogue, and this lack of a democratic culture of dialogue is due to the stance of certain ‘friends’ of this country who trained it in such a way that its leadership is not in a position to make certain domestic compromises and implement certain domestic democratic practices. I explained that we have to talk less, publicly, regarding the policy being followed within FYROM, and do more to help.
June 20, 2016