EU Urged to Engage More in Macedonia Crisis

The EU need to be more proactive in solving the crisis in Macedonia and abandon its "technocratic approach", speakers told a conference called "The potential internal instability in the Republic of Macedonia" on Wednesday in Belgrade.

Aleksandra Joksimovic, president of the Center for Foreign Policy, said the EU needed to be more directly involved in solving Macedonia's "frozen instability.

"The EU as a factor of stability is just a phrase for Macedonians. The international community is leaving the problem to be solved by itself but that is not going to happen?The technocratic approach of the EU is one of the problems," Joksimovic said.

The latest crisis revolves around allegations that the government has engaged in mass illegal surveillance.

Last week, EU mediator Peter Vanhoutte said an EU-brokered crisis deal would be dead - and Macedonia could find itself as isolated as Belarus - if leaders failed to agree on key reforms.

The talks on reforms are part of the EU-brokered political deal reached this summer aimed at ending the crisis over the unlawful mass surveillance allegations.

The opposition claims the covertly recorded tapes that it has been releasing since February show that Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski was behind the illegal surveillance of some 20,000 people, including ministers.

Gruevski, who has held power since 2006, insists the tapes were "fabricated" by unnamed foreign intelligence services and given to the opposition to destabilise the country.

Sonja Biserko, director of Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Serbia, said Macedonian instability was part of a wider regional and global crisis.

"The situation in the region shows that instability is worse now than 10 years ago. The Macedonian...