site.btaMEP Kovatchev: No Centuries-Old Macedonian Identity in EP's Draft Report

Bulgarian MEP Andrey Kovatchev (EPP/GERB) commented on a statement by North Macedonia’s Prime Minister, Hristijan Mickoski, about "the truth of Macedonian identity" being included in the European Parliament’s draft report on the country's progress.

“There is no centuries-old Macedonian identity” in the EP's draft report, neither in the text, nor as a proposal by any MEP. "This is yet another one of Skopje's manipulations and fictions," Kovatchev wrote on Facebook.

The reason for these remarks was a statement by the Prime Minister of the Republic of North Macedonia and Chair of the ruling VMRO-DPMNE, Hristijan Mickoski, in which he claims that this time Europe has heard "the truth about Macedonian identity" and the EP report on the country's progress will be accepted.

"This report will be accepted because Europe and Brussels know about the separate centuries-old Macedonian identity. And they will support this, the Macedonian language is a fact," Mickoski said.

According to Kovatchev, today there is a Macedonian identity and Bulgaria recognizes it. “But it is not centuries old, and this is obvious to anyone who knows history,” the MEP added. In his post he recalled that all Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO) activists said they were Bulgarians, including those who today are painted on the walls of the IMRO-DPMNE headquarters in Skopje.

"Hristijan Mickoski's attempt to pass off the EP report as a 'recognition of Macedonian eternity' is a cheap political stunt. His aim is to hide something else: that he actually agrees to a cosmetic inclusion of Bulgarians in the preamble of the Constitution,” Kovatchev said. According to him, this is not enough to start negotiations with the EU. The circumstances under which Bulgaria can stop the process are if the clauses of the Treaty of Friendship, Good-Neighbourliness and Cooperation, signed in 2017, and its Protocols are not respected and the rights of Macedonian Bulgarians are violated, Kovatchev added.

The Bulgarian constitution is based on civil principles and does not recognize ethnic communities as separate entities, but it guarantees the right to cultural development based on one's ethnic self-identification and the right to benefit from national and universal human cultural values. That is why there cannot be an “ethnic Macedonian” in the “Minorities Committee”. Such a committee simply does not exist, Kovatchev added. He called on the authorities in Skopje, to stop “spending money on fruitless lobbying campaigns and building myths”, but to fulfil their commitments, to break with the communist legacy of Tito's Yugoslavia and to move closer to the EU with real action.

On June 9, Kovatchev announced that he had prepared and submitted amendments to the Bulgarian Citizenship Act to create a public register at the Justice Ministry, in which all those who have received citizenship by descent (including North Macedonians) would be registered.

On June 4, the Committee on Foreign Affairs at the European Parliament agreed to postpone the vote on a report on the progress of North Macedonia towards EU accession on a proposal of rapporteur Thomas Waitz. The vote in the parliamentary committee is scheduled to take place on June 24 and in the EP plenary in Strasbourg in July.

All Bulgarian MEPs sent a letter expressing doubts about the report and reporting irregularities, including unauthorized and premature leaks of inside parliamentary information, key elements of the draft document and controversial amendments, to officials in Skopje, the GERB/EPP press office said. North Macedonia's Prime Minister's statement of June 1 that he was familiar with the report in advance was cited as an example.