Petrova: Skopje Is Showing Insufficient Willingness to Include Bulgarians in the Constitution

Bulgarian Foreign Minister Velislava Petrova said that the authorities in Skopje lack the necessary political will to implement the agreement reached as part of the 2022 European compromise. According to her, confrontations and anti-Bulgarian statements are pushing North Macedonia away from the path of integration into the European Union.

Speaking to the Bulgarian newspaper “Standard,” Petrova said that in 2022 she was part of the team that presented Sofia’s position to the European Union. She stressed that Bulgaria had managed to persuade its European partners to support this position.

“The 2022 European compromise was a major success, as it received support through a clear inter-institutional consensus in Bulgaria,” Petrova said. She underlined that securing this consensus had been difficult and that this was precisely what increased the agreement’s importance.

The Bulgarian minister denied that Sofia had imposed new demands on Skopje, insisting that Bulgaria was not asking for anything beyond the European framework already established for this issue. She said that restoring trust between the two countries would be possible only if the commitments undertaken were implemented and a constructive approach was pursued to unresolved issues.

Petrova also criticized the language recently used in relations between Skopje and Sofia. According to her, political confrontation does not serve North Macedonia in its process of accession to the European Union, but only causes delays.

During the interview, she also referred to the case of Iva Mihajlova. Petrova said that the way the Macedonian authorities acted in that situation did not provide grounds for optimism that relations between the two countries would soon make greater progress.