Today, President of Latvia Egils Levits, who is currently in Skopje with an official visit, met with North Macedonia’s Prime Minister Dimitar Kovacevski. Main topics of the meeting were deeper bilateral trade ties, North Macedonia’s European integration process and country’s chairmanship in the European Organisation for Security and Cooperation (OSCE) in 2023.
President of Latvia expressed strong support for North Macedonia’s European Union (EU) membership and underlined that North Macedonia has met accession criteria and deserves to be invited to accession negotiations as soon as possible. ‘North Macedonia has met membership criteria. We must now go on with the next step and start accession negotiations immediately. Latvia fully and consistently supports such step,’ Egils Levits underlined.
Prime Minister Kovacevski thanked Latvia for supporting North Macedonia’s reforms and sharing its experience, while also underlining country’s desire to intensify bilateral economic ties.
Slavica Grkovska, Deputy Prime Minister of North Macedonia, presented country’s good governance reform and achievements in strengthening transparency and efficiency of its institutional framework.
As both countries are committed to offer Ukraine all possible support in the face of Russian aggression, President Levits praised North Macedonia for joining EU sanctions against Russia.
Egils Levits and Dimitar Kovacevski also discussed cooperation in the framework of NATO. President of Latvia thanked North Macedonia for its readiness to send troops to Latvia in scope of the NATO enhanced Forward Presence Battle Group Latvia. Slavjanka Petrovska, North Macedonia’s Defence Minister who was also present at the meeting, noted that defence cooperation with Latvia is successful and explained how North Macedonia contributes to safer Europe.
On North Macedonia’s upcoming OSCE chairmanship, President of Latvia reiterated Latvia’s unwavering commitment to rules-based international order and said that North Macedonia can expect constructive contribution of Latvia during its chairmanship in the organisation.
