Following Bulgaria’s moves to hinder the opening of EU accession talks with North Macedonia, the latter has reassured the former over the issue of their name.
The country’s name was changed in 2019 following an agreement with Greece. But Bulgaria then asked EU Member States to stop the accession bid through a document called “Explanatory Memorandum on the relationship of the Republic of Bulgaria with the Republic of North Macedonia in the context of EU enlargement and Stabilisation process.” This was sent to 26 EU Member States.
It laid out Bulgaria’s position on several issues as well as alleged “ethnic and linguistic engineering.” It said that the enlargement process must not legitimise this so-called engineering.
Bulgarians believe that the people of Slavic descent living in North Macedonia are Bulgarians who speak the Bulgarian language but that were brainwashed by Tito’s regime. They believe that the “Macedonian identity” and language are artificial. This has been their stance since the 1950s.
Bulgaria then threatened to veto the start of EU talks with North Macedonia if issues of name, history and language are not resolved.
This week, the North Macedonian foreign minister Bujar Osmani said that Bulgaria is objecting to the use of the name “North Macedonia”. Osmani said they are willing to clarify and possibly add an annexe to a 2017 friendship treaty to smooth out the issue. This would be done to reassure Bulgaria that the use of the name North Macedonia does not imply any claims on Bulgarian territory.
“If the short name causes certain concern in Bulgaria that someone could interpret that as a territorial pretension to the historical region of Macedonia, we have no problem in making an additional clarification to Bulgaria that both the long and the short name which is in use refer to the same territory, that of the Republic of North Macedonia,” Osmani said.
The 2017 agreement signified ongoing friendship after a somewhat ambiguous former relationship. But the 2019 agreement with Greece which changed the name from the Republic of Macedonia to the Republic of North Macedonia did not please Bulgarians.
The EU General Affairs Council unanimously decided to start accession talks with North Macedonia and Albania on March 24. The EU Council of Ministers unanimously confirmed this on April 26.
The Bulgarian EU delegation however, included a statement in which they asked al references to the Macedonian language and the existence of a Macedonian ethnicity be removed. They believe that Macedonian is not different from Bulgarian and Macedonian people are no different from Bulgarians.
It’s expected that North Macedonia’s Prime Minister Zoran Zaev will visit Sofia in early November to meet Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borisov.
