After European Commissioner for Neighbourhood Policy and Enlargement Negotiations Johannes Hahn (see EUROPE 11737), it was High Representative of the EU for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Federica Mogherini who called, in Skopje on Friday 3 March, on the Macedonian president Gjorge Ivanov to respect the constitution and give the mandate for the formation of a government.
"I asked the president to reflect on the way forward, to reverse his decision in the interest of all citizens of this country (...) We expect this constitution to be respected", she said at a press conference. Mogherini underlined the EU's concerns about what she calls "a serious break of the democratic principles, of the democratic experience, of the constitution of this country".
On behalf of herself and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, Mogherini said that it would be "impossible for anyone, to convince anyone in the democratic world that the majority of members of parliament, who represent the majority of citizens in a unitary state, cannot be allowed to form a government". "Instead of democratic rules, chaos prevails", she said, adding that the president's refusal to give the mandate "breaks the spirit of democracy". "This is inconsistent with basic democratic principles, this is inconsistent also with the Euro-Atlantic integration process", she said. Mogherini hoped the "good exchanges" she had had with the country's leaders, including the president, would allow the country and its institutions to find a reasonable way forward in full respect of the constitution and bring the country out of "this institutional and political crisis in a very responsible manner".
Mogherini also said that "too much time" had been lost, and asked if the leaders of the country were ready to move ahead with European integration.
In addition, she called on the political leaders and all those who have institutional responsibilities to exercise the maximum of responsibility, and to contain and scale down any rhetoric that can fuel clashes or confrontation in society, in order to "avoid that this political and institutional crisis becomes an inter-ethnic conflict, or even worse a geopolitical conflict". "We do not need fuel, because we have quite some fire already", she said. (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant)