Today, Deputy Prime Minister for Climate Policy and Minister of Environment and Water Borislav Sandov participated in the third meeting of the Interdepartmental Working Group for Cooperation with the Republic of North Macedonia “European Cooperation - Green Transition and Digital Transformation, Rule of Law”, which was held in Skopje.

The other participants from the Bulgarian side included the Deputy Prime Minister for Effective Governance Kalina Konstantinova, the Minister of Electronic Government Bozhidar Bozhanov, and the Deputy Minister of Justice Borislav Ganchev.

On behalf of the Republic of North Macedonia, the meeting attended Bojan Maricic,  Deputy Prime Minister for European Affairs, Slavica Grkovska, Deputy Prime Minister for Good Governance Policies, Naser Nuredini, Minister of Environment and Spatial Planning, Admirim Aliti, Minister of Information Society and Administration, and Nikola Tupancheski, Minister of Justice.

The implementation of the agreements from the second meeting of the working group, which was hosted by the MOEW in March this year, was reviewed. After that the ministers continued work in separate sessions.

During the bilateral conversation with his Macedonian counterpart Naser Nuredini, Minister Sandov announced the start of a project for sharing the Bulgarian experience in the negotiations on Chapter 27 “Environment” within the EU pre-accession process. The project was developed by the Ministry of Environment and Water and aims to improve dialogue and cooperation with the Republic of North Macedonia. Funding is provided by the International Development Cooperation Program of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Minister Sandov stressed that the project will make a significant contribution to good governance by enabling effective transposition of EU law into national law.

The partnership between the civil society organizations of the two countries is the other important topic that the ministers discussed.

During the meeting, Minister Bojanov and Minister Aliti signed a Declaration on Cooperation between the Ministry of Electronic Government of the Republic of Bulgaria and the Ministry of Information Society and Administration of the Republic of North Macedonia.

The annual program of the working group was also discussed, which includes a schedule of upcoming joint activities until the end of 2022.