Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borissov and his cabinet. Photo: gov.bg

The authorities in North Macedonia have remained silent after the Bulgarian government on Wednesday adopted a long and stiff set of conditions for the country’s progress towards EU membership talks.

The cabinet of North Macedonia’s Prime Minister, Zoran Zaev, told BIRN on Thursday that any reactions would come at a “later stage”, noting that Zaev is now on a two-day visit to Serbia. The office of North Macedonia’s President, Stevo Pendarovski, has also not commented.

The Bulgarian government’s “Framework Position” supports giving North Macedonia and Albania a start date for EU accession negotiations at the European Council meeting slated for October 17.

But it then lists more than 20 demands – and a timetable for North Macedonia to fulfill them – during the accession talks.

It warns that “Bulgaria will not allow the EU integration of the Republic of North Macedonia to be accompanied by European legitimization of an anti-Bulgarian ideology”, sponsored by Skopje.

“The rewriting of the history of parts of the Bulgarian people after 1944 is one of the pillars of the anti-Bulgarian ideological construction of the [former] Yugoslav totalitarianism,” it adds.

Problems with Macedonian language and history:

Sofia threatens to block the first inter-government conference, which would formally mark the start of Skopje’s EU accession talks, if it fails to see “real progress” by North Macedonia in implementing their 2017 bilateral friendship treaty.

Most notably, North Macedonia must give up any claim about the existence of a Macedonian minority in Bulgaria.

It must also remove the term “Bulgarian Fascist Occupator” from all World War II historic landmarks in North Macedonia, as well as start the rehabilitation of what it sees as Bulgarians who suffered under former Yugoslav rule because of their Bulgarian identity.

Bulgaria also demands a new process of lustration to root out former communist informants who harmed Bulgarians in Macedonia during that period. A Macedonian republic was a constituent part of the former Yugoslav federation from the end of World War II until the early 1990s.

Other demands refer to contested historical events and figures from the Ottoman era and before World War II, which historians in the two countries often interpret very differently.

Sofia wants the joint history commission, which was formed after the signing of the 2017 friendship agreement, to present more aligned stances on several key figures and events.

These include the nature of an important Ottoman-Era clandestine revolutionary organisation, the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organisation, VMRO, and the identity of one of its leaders, Gotse Delchev, as well as the nature of the anti-Ottoman rising in Macedonia in 1903, known as the Ilinden [St Elijah’s Day] uprising.

Bulgaria insists on the fundamentally Bulgarian character of the VMRO movement, while both countries honour the Ilinden uprising – which resulted in the formation of a short-lived republic in today’s North Macedonia – as their own. A bitter dispute continues also over whether leading figures in the rising, including Delchev, are to be considered Macedonian or Bulgarian.

The joint commission comprising mainly of historians from both sides is working to bridge this and other disagreements – but Bulgaria has stepped up accusations that the North Macedonian side is not budging on the issues.

In the document, Bulgaria also advises the EU to avoid using the term “Macedonian language” during the accession talks, and instead use the term “Official language of Republic of North Macedonia”.

The Macedonian language is another point of dispute. Alongside its longstanding claim that Macedonians are basically Bulgarian, Bulgaria also sees the Macedonian language as a dialect of Bulgarian, insisting its differences are the result of deliberately anti-Bulgarian policies pursued by the former Yugoslav state.

If this is not possible, Bulgaria continues, the EU should put an asterisk after the term “Macedonian language” to clarify that this is the term used in the North Macedonian constitution.

“Not a single document during the [North Macedonian] accession process can be seen as a Bulgarian acknowledgement of the existence of a so-called ‘Macedonian language’ that is different from Bulgarian,” the text concludes.

Bulgaria also wants North Macedonia to complete an additional set of tasks before the EU launches the second intergovernmental conference of the accession process, whenever that may be.

By then, Sofia insists that the two countries must “harmonize” school textbooks as well as historic literature that refers to the 19^th and 20^th century, “overcoming the hate speech” against Bulgaria that Sofia says remains present in North Macedonia.

The document concludes that Sofia will take the fulfillment of all of these preconditions into consideration during the final stage of North Macedonia’s EU accession talks before it ratifies its neighbour’s EU accession protocol.

The Bulgarian parliament on Thursday is to discuss the draft declaration in support of North Macedonia’s and Albania’s start of EU accession talks.

While the draft text of the declaration states that the Bulgarian parliament is devoted to the EU enlargement process, it goes to say that EU integration will not be done at the expense of distorting events, documents, artifacts or figures from Bulgarian history.