Deputy Prime Minister Zaharieva Receives a Delegation of the Constitutional Court of the Republic of Macedonia
04 June 2018 News
Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Ekaterina Zaharieva received a delegation of the Constitutional Court of the Republic of Macedonia, led by the Court’s President Nikola Ivanovski. The President of the Constitutional Court of the Republic of Bulgaria Boris Velchev, at whose invitation the Macedonian delegation is visiting, as well as judges of the Bulgarian Constitutional Court, also attended the meeting.
“I am glad to be able to welcome you here, and I am grateful to President Boris Velchev for having extending this invitation to you,” said Minister Zaharieva, addressing the Bulgarian and the Macedonian constitutional judges. She emphasised that recent months have witnessed a number of meetings between representatives of the various branches of government of the Republic of Bulgaria and the Republic of Macedonia and that bilateral cooperation is making vigorous progress at various levels. Zaharieva sees this as further evidence of the positive effect of the efforts of the governments of Prime Minister Borissov and Prime Minister Zaev to foster good neighbourly and partnership relations between the two countries.
“We started from a very low level, but within just eight months we managed to overcome some of the problems between us and to build real trust.
This is a good starting point and gives an added impetus to an invigoration of business-to-business and person-to-person contacts, as businesses and individuals already respond to the achievements at the political level,” the chief Bulgarian diplomat stressed. To make her point, she noted that two-way trade recorded a substantial growth of 11%, the largest for the last ten years, and that tourist exchanges are increasing, too. Deputy Prime Minister Ekaterina Zaharieva presented to her guests the efforts that Bulgaria is making, as holder of the EU Council Presidency, for the European perspective of the Western Balkan countries. She recalled the results of the EU-Western Balkans Summit which our country hosted in May. “I am glad that this irreversibility of the Western Balkans’ European perspective, for which we worked so hard, is already a fact and this priority will be taken up by the next EU presidencies,” Minister Zaharieva pointed out.
During the meeting, Nikola Ivanovski presented the structure, organisation and competences of the judicial body which he heads. He also highlighted the fine cooperation between the Constitutional Court of the Republic of Macedonia and their Bulgarian counterparts.
“As a Bulgarian, I am very proud of the work done by our Government in recent months,” said the President of the Bulgarian Constitutional Court Boris Velchev. He expressed the hope that what the Bulgarian EU Council Presidency has started will be continued and that the Republic of Macedonia will achieve EU membership.
For her part, Minister Zaharieva emphasised that our support for the Republic of Macedonia will not end with the six months of the Presidency. “Bulgaria is disinterested and sincere in its help. We want all our neighbours to be stable and prosperous,” she stressed.
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