Activities of Angel DZHAMBAZKI related to 2022/2203(INI)
Legal basis opinions (0)
Amendments (40)
Amendment 20 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital A a (new)
Recital A a (new)
Amendment 43 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital F
Recital F
F. whereas each country should be judged on its own merits and whereas the accession process should not be misused to settle bilateral dispube comprehensive and driven by shared values without conflicting with the interests of Member States;
Amendment 48 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital F a (new)
Recital F a (new)
Fa. whereas North Macedonia refuses to comply with the Treaty of friendship, good neighbourliness and cooperation, especially regarding hate speech against Bulgaria and recognising mutual history;
Amendment 49 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital F a (new)
Recital F a (new)
Fa. Whereas to be part of the EU, North Macedonia has to fully implement their bilateral treaties.
Amendment 62 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital H a (new)
Recital H a (new)
Ha. whereas the accession negotiations should start after the amendment of the Constitution of the Republic of North Macedonia and the inclusion of Bulgarians in its preamble;
Amendment 63 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 1
Paragraph 1
1. Welcomes North Macedonia’s consistent commitment to EU integration, which has been underpinned by steady progress on guaranteeing democracy, the rule of law and fundamental rights, while moving towards cross-cutting policy alignment;
Amendment 78 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 2 a (new)
Paragraph 2 a (new)
Amendment 83 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 2 a (new)
Paragraph 2 a (new)
2a. Welcomes North Macedonia’s commitment to the ‘Clean Network’ initiative alongside Bulgaria and Kosovo in eliminating long term threats to data privacy and security by using only ‘trusted vendors’ in the development of its 5G technology and urges its neighbours to follow this example;
Amendment 84 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 2 b (new)
Paragraph 2 b (new)
2b. Recognises the important contributions that North Macedonia has made to CSDP Missions EUFOR Althea and EUTM RCA, as well as contributions made to EU battlegroup initiatives;
Amendment 85 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 2 c (new)
Paragraph 2 c (new)
2c. Recognizes the role of the Special Operations Regiment of the Army of North Macedonia and appreciates their added value in deployment in peacekeeping missions in areas of conflict such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, and Bosnia and Herzegovina; recognises their added value in counter-terrorism, unconventional warfare, counter-drug operations, and hostage rescue;
Amendment 89 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 3
Paragraph 3
3. Urges decision-makers to foster a national consensus on EU integration, building upon a successful start to the screening process, to work towards the ambitious goal of meeting the criteria for EU membership by 2030; encourages efforts to convince civil society of benefits of EU membership through programs and educational resources for the public in light of recent discouragement from delays in ascension process;
Amendment 117 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 6 a (new)
Paragraph 6 a (new)
6a. Regrets the proposal of the President of North Macedonia to ban democratically elected Members of the European Parliament from entering the territory of North Macedonia; notes, however that the ban never occurred;
Amendment 131 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 9 a (new)
Paragraph 9 a (new)
9a. Commends the North Macedonian judicial system’s crackdown on upper- level corruption through the conviction in absentia of former Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski for a 5th prison sentence while he is currently living in exile in Hungary after attaining asylum;
Amendment 141 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 10 a (new)
Paragraph 10 a (new)
10a. Commends North Macedonia’s participation in the Global Coalition To Defeat Daesh and the Joint Action Plan on Counter-Terrorism in the Western Balkans; recognizes the efforts made by North Macedonia to combat the financing of terrorism as laid out in the 2021-2023 National Strategy for the Prevention of Money Laundering and Financing of Terrorism;
Amendment 142 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 10 a (new)
Paragraph 10 a (new)
10a. Recognises the call by North Macedonia’s National Centre for Computer Incident Response for government institutions to increase cyber security measures after multiple attacks over the last few years including attacks on the website of the Education Ministry in 2022, site for public services in 2022, and State Electoral Commission website in 2020;
Amendment 144 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 10 b (new)
Paragraph 10 b (new)
Amendment 145 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 10 c (new)
Paragraph 10 c (new)
10c. Urges caution in regard to Turkish influence and funding through use of its Directorate of Religious Affairs offices set up within North Macedonia known as the Diyanet;
Amendment 146 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 10 d (new)
Paragraph 10 d (new)
10d. Urges caution regarding Iranian activity in the Western Balkans. Recognises that recent cyber attacks and the foiled plans to attack members of an exiled Iranian opposition group known as the People’s Mujahedin of Iran (MEK) in Albania by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force has strongly negative implications for North Macedonia;
Amendment 147 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 10 e (new)
Paragraph 10 e (new)
10e. Urges caution in regard to the large funding of Wahhabist institutions throughout the region whose practices are discreet and may be able to influence and/or radicalise younger and/or rural Islamic communities in the region;
Amendment 150 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 11 a (new)
Paragraph 11 a (new)
11a. Welcomes the investigations taken against prolific smuggling rings; stresses that there is a considerable need for further action by local officials and intelligence sharing with EU law enforcement agencies;
Amendment 151 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 11 a (new)
Paragraph 11 a (new)
11a. Notes the importance of cooperating with the EU in the fight against trafficking in human beings and migrant smuggling through the ‘Balkan route’
Amendment 152 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 11 b (new)
Paragraph 11 b (new)
11b. Encourages North Macedonia to strengthen operations against the trafficking of cultural property which allows organised crime and terrorist groups to attain funding through this highly unregulated global market; Stresses the necessity of ensuring the authenticity of the provenance of art/cultural pieces and the need to work multilaterally across borders to make the international trafficking of these objects more difficult at the source-country level in places such as museums in developing countries where cultural property is usually not itemized into databases and points of transfer at customs checkpoints at the transfer-countries level;
Amendment 154 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 12 a (new)
Paragraph 12 a (new)
12a. Notes the growing risk of increasing influence of China throughout the region; expresses concern that North Macedonia could become increasingly vulnerable to investment from China, risking a backslide in development in the rule of law.
Amendment 160 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 13 a (new)
Paragraph 13 a (new)
13a. Commends the agreements made between the Council and North Macedonia on 24 February 2023 that will allow for Frontex joint operations and the deployment of border management teams to North Macedonia; Acknowledges the importance of these efforts in managing migratory flow, countering illegal immigration, and addressing cross-border crime; highlights the importance of joint- operations between Frontex and North Macedonia in aligning the immigration policy of North Macedonia and the European Union; Acknowledges that the second most used path to Europe followed by migrants was the Western Balkan route consists of travel from Greece and Bulgaria into the Western Balkans (including North Macedonia) and then on into Serbia and the need of North Macedonia to have the appropriate amount of detention centres;
Amendment 183 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 16 a (new)
Paragraph 16 a (new)
16a. Commends the willingness of the government of North Macedonia to engage in prison reform discussions through their meeting on 16 May 2022 with the President of the European Committee for Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CPT), Alan Mitchell, and the Vice-Governor of the Council of Europe Development Bank (CEB), Tomáš Boček; Urges North Macedonia to commit to these reforms in order to assure fair and humane treatment of prisoners in accordance to treaty law and to prevent the conditions often found in prison that group together organized crime members and extremists and allows for malicious connections to be made;
Amendment 185 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 16 a (new)
Paragraph 16 a (new)
16a. Strongly condemns the vicious violent attack against Hristijan Pendikov, the secretary of the Bulgarian Cultural Club in Ohrid, who suffered life- threatening injuries; notes that the attack was motivated by hate; regrets the decision of the judiciary to postpone the litigation has been postponed; regrets that one of the assailants is still at large;
Amendment 189 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 16 a (new)
Paragraph 16 a (new)
16a. Regrets the small punishment for hate crimes, such as the burning of the Bulgarian Club in Bitola by Lambe Alabakovski;
Amendment 191 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 16 b (new)
Paragraph 16 b (new)
16b. Deplores the continuing physical attacks, intimidation, hate speech and political slurs against Bulgarian cultural institutions and members of the Bulgarian community, including by MPs and government officials; calls on the authorities to investigate all cases of such attacks, to punish the perpetrators appropriately and to improve the safety of cultural institutions; expresses concern about continuous discrediting and targeting of people from the Bulgarian community by media outlets calls on North Macedonia to strengthen human rights institutions, guarantee their independence of the judiciary and follow- up on convictions for hate-crimes.
Amendment 192 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 16 b (new)
Paragraph 16 b (new)
16b. Urges the authorities to effectively fight hate motivated crimes through coordinated investigations and prosecutions leading to final convictions;
Amendment 208 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 18 a (new)
Paragraph 18 a (new)
18a. Stresses the need to ensure that all minorities that live in North Macedonia are provided adequate support and live free from intimidation or any kind of discrimination;
Amendment 209 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 18 a (new)
Paragraph 18 a (new)
18a. Underlines the commitment of North Macedonia to include the Bulgarians in the preamble of its Constitution;
Amendment 222 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 19 a (new)
Paragraph 19 a (new)
19a. Expresses its concerns about the attacks against Bulgarian cultural clubs and organizations; regrets the adoption of the law on associations and foundations, which aims to limit the creation of new associations of citizens with a Bulgarian identity;
Amendment 225 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 20
Paragraph 20
20. Acknowledges North Macedonia’s enabling environment for media freedom and urges the authorities to ensure transparency of media ownership, financing and political advertising, as well as the public broadcaster’s and the media regulator’s ability to operate independently; recalls the need to counter political interference and foreign and home-grown disinformation and manipulative narratives; deplores threats and attacks against journalists; calls for an immediate halt in the media that is focused on promoting anti-Bulgarian views.
Amendment 252 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 22 a (new)
Paragraph 22 a (new)
22a. Acknowledges and commends North Macedonia for acting as a neutral host for negotiations between states in the Balkans, helping facilitate peace-building in the region and reconciliation which further strengthens Europe and the European Union
Amendment 258 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 23 a (new)
Paragraph 23 a (new)
Amendment 270 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 25 a (new)
Paragraph 25 a (new)
25a. Calls for the opening and the publication of all wartime archives; reiterates its call, therefore, for the former Yugoslav archives to be opened and, in particular, for access to be granted to the files of the former Yugoslav Secret Service (UDBA) and the Yugoslav People’s Army Secret Service (KOS), and for the files to be returned to the respective governments;
Amendment 284 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 26 a (new)
Paragraph 26 a (new)
26a. Regrets that in the current parliamentary term, the National Assembly failed to adopt the necessary changes in the constitution as per the French Proposal on EU membership for North Macedonia; calls on the National Assembly to do so without any undue delays;
Amendment 300 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 30 a (new)
Paragraph 30 a (new)
30a. Acknowledges the government’s political, cultural, economic and energy ties with Russia and expresses concern regarding the tremendous growth of Russian investment channelled to North Macedonia via third countries that have obscured the true extent of Russia’s economic footprint and have created an energy dependency by controlling the single gas route to the country via the TransBalkan Pipeline;
Amendment 305 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 30 b (new)
Paragraph 30 b (new)
30b. Welcomes the announcement of North Macedonia in joining the Alexandroupolis Energy Project and encourages greater cooperation with Member States in improving energy security across the region;
Amendment 309 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 32
Paragraph 32
32. Notes the need to fill in transport connectivity gaps by improving planning and administrative and operational capacity and by making progress on new and unfinished core infrastructure projects; cautions against fully funding key national infrastructure, telecommunications, and/or other projects using funds or technology provided by states who have a malicious interest in compromising the security of North Macedonia or the EU.