Macedonian PM threatens early election over political deadlock

{{Macedonia’s prime minister threatened on Saturday to call a snap election unless the main opposition party did more to resolve a political deadlock that is damaging its European Union membership prospects.}}

Nikola Gruevski said the prospect of opening EU entry talks could be withdrawn if the conservative government and the centre-left Social Democrats failed to produce an agreed report on an incident last December when opposition legislators were thrown out for brawling.

A joint government-opposition commission, formed under EU pressure, said on Friday it was unable to agree on what had happened in the incident, when police evicted journalists and opposition deputies during parliament’s budget debate.

Gruevski told the Social Democrats that if they did not help by Sunday to adopt the report requested by the EU, he would call a snap election to try to maintain Macedonia’s standing in Brussels.

“The second option is to convene parliament on Monday and vote to disband it and call an early election for October,” he told a news conference. He said he had enough support in parliament to win the vote.

EU Enlargement Commissioner Stefan Fule said in February that failure to resolve the dispute was putting at risk an opportunity for Macedonia to clinch the start of membership talks.

{wirestory}