North Macedonia

Amid health and economic crises, North Macedonia faces a political one as well - with the opposition blocking the adoption of important bills in parliament.

Although Skopje appointed former Prime Minister Vlado Buchkovski as special representative in Sofia, Macedonian politicians themselves do not trust him, and this is evident from the fact that he has an assistant, the state secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

However, Jutarnji list writes, there are still some states in favor of enlargement within the EU. Greece, Bulgaria and Slovenia are certainly among those. However, the three countries have something else in common, which qualifies them for proving the famous saying that "with such 'friends', we don't need enemies".

The Financial Police Directorate told BIRN that, as a director of ALFA SKOP DOO Skopje in 2013 and 2014, Kazic failed to report profits of 61.8 million denars, roughly a million euros, "thus failing to calculate and pay profit tax in the amount of 10 per cent of the total."

ALFA SKOP DOO is the owner of Alfa TV, one of six national broadcasters in North Macedonia.

It seems that North Macedonia is about to part with some of the myths in its history under pressure from Bulgaria. Prime Minister Zoran Zaev have recently made such suggestions. The reason for this turn is that Bulgaria is blocking the negotiations of the former Yugoslav Republic to join the EU. The process in Skopje proceeds painfully and dramatically.

North Macedonia's NATO air policing program is reportedly being discussed by Skopje and Sofia as part of the bid to find common ground that will resolve a conflict between the two neighboring countries that has led Bulgaria to raise obstacles to North Macedonia's European Union accession.

A similar problem, to a lesser extent, appears when searching for news reports from May 5, 2015.

That was when the then opposition Social Democrats in North Macedonia published wiretapped recordings suggesting that police and top officials might have been involved in a police cover-up of the brutal murder of a young man, Martin Neskovski.

Some 2,000 protesters staged an opposition rally in North Macedonia late Thursday to demand the resignation of the country's Social Democrat prime minister, Zoran Zaev.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, North Macedonia this year decided against holding a traditional banquet to commemorate the anniversary of the signing of the historic 2001 Ohrid Peace Accord which ended a short-lived conflict that year by granting more rights to the country's ethnic Albanians.

North Macedonia's president on Thursday handed a mandate to pro-Western ex-prime minister Zoran Zaev to form a new government after his party bloc narrowly won a July 15 election.

"I will lead a government that will not ... veer away from the road leading to membership of the European Union after obtaining membership of NATO," Zaev said.