Skopje, 7 September 2022 (MIA) - President Stevo Pendarovski said that we cannot discuss European integration if we do not want to have good neighbourly agreements with our neighbours. He does not support a referendum that would cancel the Friendship Treaty with Bulgaria, because, as he added, it would stop the country's European integration. That would be the same as believing that we can cancel the Prespa Agreement with Greece, and believing that we can remain a member of NATO. That is impossible, Pendarovski noted. “This is not my ad hoc view, it is based on arguments and a thought process on what it might lead to if that referendum is successful. If you reject or try to reject through a referendum the bilateral agreement with Bulgaria and European integration and negotiations, it is the same as someone telling you that you can reject or cancel the Prespa Agreement with Greece in a referendum and remain a member of NATO, it's impossible. Let us have no illusions, bilateral agreements with neighbours and good neighbourly relations as they call them in the EU are one of the key prerequisites, always have been, for the integration of any country not only from this region, but the entire post-communist world after 1990,” Pendarovski added. During Wednesday’s joint press conference with Slovakia’s President Zuzana Čaputová, Pendarovski told reporters that we cannot discuss European integration if we do not want to have good neighbourly agreements with our neighbours. Asked whether he would initiate a meeting with VMRO-DPMNE leader Hristijan Mickoski, whose party started a procedure for calling a referendum, President Pendarovski noted that he was available to anyone who wanted to talk to him about any issue, and he, as the president initiated meetings and talks with all political stakeholders. “I remain open to discussions on any issue that touches the interests of the state and, above all, the interests of the citizens. However, regarding this question, my position is known, and I announced it to the Macedonian public yesterday,” Pendarovski said. VMRO-DPMNE is to start a procedure for a citizens’ initiative to collect signatures for a mandatory referendum. The referendum question, according to the party leader Hristijan Mickoski, will refer to the Friendship Treaty with Bulgaria that Zaev concluded with Borissov, as “the source and beginning of all problems for Macedonia and the basis on which Bulgaria then based its maximalist demands and positions”.