The vote in the European Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee on the annual report regarding North Macedonia's progress towards EU membership was deferred, BNR’s Brussels correspondent Angelina Piskova reports.

The report was removed from the agenda at the request of the rapporteur, Thomas Waitz, amid pressure from the European People’s Party group and with the backing of all Bulgarian MEPs.

In a letter to their colleagues, the Bulgarian MEPs expressed concerns about the integrity of the rapporteur and reported irregularities, including unauthorised and premature leaks of internal parliamentary information. They cited, for example, a statement made by North Macedonian Prime Minister Hristijan Mickoski on 1 June, in which he claimed to have been familiar with the report in great detail in advance.

'It is concerning that Mickoski claims his government worked on this report for 11 months alongside the rapporteur in order to achieve such a favourable outcome for them,' the Bulgarian MEPs noted.

In addition to calling for the vote on the report to be postponed, the MEPs are urging the Parliament to conduct an internal investigation into a potential breach of procedures, in order to identify the source and extent of the leak.