“One can hardly talk about any improvement in Bulgarian-Macedonian relations over the last few years, but now they are going to be brought to the lowest possible level,” she tells Emerging Europe.
According to Professor Vankovska, the blame for these developments rests squarely with the Macedonian political elite.
“What is truly frustrating is that Macedonian state elites show no ability to learn from their own mistakes, and now pretend to be ‘sleeping beauties’ woken up by an unpleasant Bulgarian prince. Bulgaria is taking advantage of the EU’s preoccupation with more serious issues, leaving the Balkan enfants terribles to play their nationalist games,” she says.
She also adds that the disagreement between Bulgaria and North Macedonia could prove far more challenging than the dispute with Greece.
“The Bulgarian-Macedonian hurdle is much more serious, mostly because of the closeness between the two peoples and cultures. The Macedonians could not be truly challenged by the Greeks, because the two nations are very different in many respects, but Bulgarian cultural imperialism is seen as a much bigger threat to Macedonian identity precisely because of the similarities,” she adds.
Aleksandar Nikoloski, the vice president of the Macedonian opposition party VMRO-DPMNE has said that the government is trying to relativise the Bulgarian document which has “become and integral part of the decision of the European Council on Macedonia.”
“It is necessary to build a joint position that will be a worthy response to the attempts to erase the Macedonian language and people, and that position should be built in accordance with all key political and social factors, and it should reflect the current situation and be binding for the current and for each future government,” he added.
However, President of North Macedonia Stevo Pendarovski does not expect the issue to impede the country in joining the European Union.
“I do not expect such issues to lead to the suspension of EU membership negotiations. Let me remind you that this document is the position of a member state, not an official position or criterion set by the European Union. We have recently received an unconditional decision to start negotiations and the European institutions are already working on the preparation of the negotiating framework, in accordance with the conclusions and the adopted new methodology. We can expect the issues of good neighbourly policy to be present in the negotiating framework,” he says.
If Bulgaria had really wanted to put a spanner in the works, it could have vetoed the European Council decision to begin accession talks, which are likely to take many years as when they commence (no official date has yet been set). Bulgaria’s current government, which has never been afraid to adopt populist and nationalist causes, may merely be playing to its home crowd. North Macedonia will certainly hope so.
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Source link : https://emerging-europe.com/news/after-greece-north-macedonia-faces-new-challenge-on-eu-path-bulgaria/
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Publish date : 2020-05-06 07:00:00
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