Page 76 - BNE_magazine_06_2020 Growers

76 Opinion
bne June 2020
BALKAN BLOG:
Is Bulgaria the next serious hurdle on North Macedonia’s EU path?
Valentina Dimitrievska in Skopje
After North Macedonia resolved the long-running name dispute with Greece, the public in the small Balkan country are now preoccupied with a new dilemma:
will Bulgaria be the next serious obstacle for North Macedonia on its path to join the EU?
North Macedonia and Bulgaria signed a Friendship Treaty immediately after the Social Democrats came to power
in Skopje in 2017, but an EU document has recently been released in which the EU's conclusions on starting negotiations with Skopje include an appendix with a long list of Bulgaria's demands including non-recognition of the Macedonian language.
North Macedonia, together with Albania, was invited in March to launch EU accession talks, after years of obstacles posed by its southern neighbour Greece over the name dispute, concerning Athens’ objections to the use of the name “Macedonia”.
After concluding the Prespa name deal with Greece, which added a prefix to the name of the country, which is now called North Macedonia, officials from the ruling SDSM claimed that despite the change of the name, the Macedonian national identity and the language are preserved.
But the appendix in the EU document says that Bulgaria wants the language spoken by Macedonians to be called the “official language of the Republic of North Macedonia”, which is by
no means acceptable for the Macedonian people. The list also includes other demands, such as not claiming that
a Macedonian minority exists in Bulgaria.
The Macedonian identity has long been undermined by the country’s neighbours, but the friendship treaty with Bulgaria, although challenged by the opposition, was seen as a guarantee that good neighbourly relations had been established and obstacles to the country's EU integration removed.
www.bne.eu
A monument to Goce Delcev. Both Bulgaria and North Macedonia lay claim to the historical hero.
Trojan horse
Now, however, the treaty seems to be a Trojan horse for Macedonians as many hidden demands from the Bulgarian side may emerge from it.
Under the friendship treaty, Skopje and Sofia formed a mixed commission on historical and educational issues, whose work was suspended by the Macedonian side in December 2019 due to the insurmountable disagreements about national hero Goce Delcev, who fought for Macedonia's independence during the Ottoman Empire; for Macedonians he was Macedonian and for Bulgarians he was Bulgarian.
The commission was due to be restarted after the April 12 election in North Macedonia, which was postponed due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. It therefore ended its work without a decision about Delcev.
Bulgarian MEP Andrey Kovatchev, who comes from Prime Minister Boyko Borisov's ruling GERB, has now hinted in an interview with Bulgaria's Euroactiv.bg portal that Bulgaria is threatening Skopje with a veto on EU membership talks.
Specifically, he said that Bulgaria will not agree to allow Skopje to start negotiations with the EU if it “continues to falsify history”.
"If the mixed history commission does not restart working by June and the Skopje authorities continue to falsify history, Bulgaria will not agree to start pre-accession talks with the country," Kovachev was quoted as saying. It was noted that this is his own opinion and not the official position of the government.
Kovachev's statement came one day after Bulgarian Foreign Minister Ekaterina Zaharieva said the Macedonian language was a Western Bulgarian dialect with “Serbisms”.
According to Zaharieva, it would be in Macedonia's interest to