Why is Bulgaria blocking North Macedonia on its path to the EU?

After years of quarreling, disappointment, the intense pressure and obstructions that Greece — and later France — had meted out to North Macedonia, the citizens of this small country in the Southern Balkans began to believe that they were finally able to kick-start their EU accession talks. But not everything in life runs like clockwork.

This time, Bulgaria was just around the corner, with conditions and constraints apparently more absurd than any of the previous ones. Sofia has rekindled some old conflicts by demanding Skopje acknowledge that the Macedonian language is essentially Bulgarian, and the Macedonians are in fact Bulgarians. The argument is that the Macedonian nation was created in 1944 by Josip Broz Tito and the Communist Party of Yugoslavia.

The bluntest statements come from the foreign minister of Bulgaria, Ekaterina Zakharieva and minister of defense Krasimir Karakachanov, as well as some other high-profile officials. Karakachanov in particular goes as far as threatening to send the army to Skopje to order them to remove memorial plaques from World War II — they memorialize the time when North Macedonia was under occupation by the then fascist Bulgaria.

The treaty on good neighborliness does not apply to Bulgaria

The government in Skopje headed by prime minister Zoran Zaev met with its Bulgarian counterpart in August 2017 to sign a good neighborliness treaty, one of the cornerstones for [North Macedonia’s] accession to the EU along with the 2018 Prespa Agreement. Ratified in both parliaments in January 2018, “The Treaty on Friendship, Good Neighborliness and Cooperation between the Republic of Macedonia and the Republic of Bulgaria” was envisaged to bring about a resolution between the two countries, which included the creation of a multidisciplinary commission mandated to address various historical and educational issues.

Unfortunately, it was halted last year because Bulgaria insisted that Goce Delčev — a Macedonian revolutionary who fought against the Ottomans — was in reality a Bulgarian. Historical records portray Delčev as a Bulgarian-born Macedonian championing the political independence of Macedonia, at the time, as one of the founders of the Vnatrešna Makedonska Revolucionerna Organizacija (VMRO).

That this would turn into a bigger problem and block the country’s entry to the EU was a looming prospect as far back as spring 2020. Back then, the prime minister of Bulgaria, Boyko Borisov, announced that if the government in the North Macedonia aimed to bypass roadblocks on its path to the Union, the history commission would have to quicken up their pace and accept Goce Delčev as a Bulgarian. The commission members responded by saying that it was a process and that historical matters could not be cleared up fast. Today, it is understood that this did not matter to Bulgarian politicians.

In order to reinforce its nationalist position, the Bulgarian government has sent a memorandum to EU members where it dished out its views.

The memorandum includes a baseless claim that “more than 20,000 people” who identified as Bulgarians and represented the intellectual elite of the Socialist Republic of Macedonia were killed between 1944 and 1946, while more than 100,000 persons were either imprisoned, executed or transported to concentration camps.

On the other hand, there is no mention of the fact that the state of Bulgaria was a World War II ally of Nazi Germany up until 1944, occupying Macedonia as a self-proclaimed liberator of its people along the way. Neither is it brought to attention that the Nazi Bulgarian regime was sending Macedonians to labor camps, murdering innocent citizens and carried out the process of Bulgarization, imposing the Bulgarian culture outside of their borders.

Macedonia was liberated from the Nazis in November 1944. Later that year, in August, it declared independence and became a separate unit within the then Yugoslavia, transforming into the People’s Republic of Macedonia (later the Socialist Republic of Macedonia) by the end of the year. It remained in Yugoslavia as such until the Yugoslav federation broke up in 1991.

The growing frustration

The long gone past has found its way onto the negotiating table where the very future of North Macedonia is discussed; the country agreed upon the negotiation framework with the EU in March before the ministers of foreign affairs and European integration of North Macedonia and Bulgaria were invited to Berlin in early November this year. Germany was in fact hoping to find a way to end its term as EU president — which expires by the end of the year — by brokering a deal.

Unfortunately, what Minister Zakharieva, representing Bulgaria, and Minister Bujar Osmani, representing North Macedonia, had settled on in Berlin, PM Borisov and the president of Bulgaria, Rumen Radev, scrapped in Skopje and Sofia very easily.

Owing to the unrealistic and unabashed blockade by Bulgaria, frustrations have been running high in the EU, threatening to morph into a problem as big as the one with Greece.

On November 17, at the meeting of the EU Council ministers where the negotiation framework for North Macedonia was due to be adopted so the dialogue process would begin in December, Bulgaria decided to cast a veto.

Having become an EU candidate in 2005, North Macedonia has been waiting for the commencement of negotiations since 2009. They were delayed because of the name dispute and Greek veto of the negotiations.

In the meantime, a number of intellectuals and media outlets from across Europe have offered their interpretations of the feud.

Michael Martens — Balkan correspondent at the influential German daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung — ironically harks back to the fact that the Greeks had denied the existence of North Macedonia as a country, while the Bulgarians go even deeper, denying the language and origin of its people by claiming that both are merely artificial creations.

In his piece republished by Deutsche Welle in Macedonian, Martens coats the explanation in cynicism: He writes that the Bulgarians view themselves as a “gift from God,” referring to the absurdity of Sofia’s demeanor.

Numerous intellectuals have spoken out as voices of reason that the official Bulgarian position is counterproductive for all sides.

One of them is Gerald Knaus — founder of the European Stability Initiative (ESI). He believes that the pressure coming from Bulgaria is a “lost cause” and that the blockade will push North Macedonia into a state of political hopelessness.

There are also some members of the Bulgarian public who do not agree with Sofia’s official position.

Bulgarian journalist Georgi Koritarov provides the clearest explanation of how the government of his country treats the Macedonian people and state. In one of his pieces, he writes that — in order for the things to be straightened out between the two sides — Bulgaria should start by apologizing and repenting for having deported 7,200 Macedonian Jews to the Treblinka concentration camp during World War II. This fact is fundamental to the problem now imposed from Sofia.

Moreover, 30 Bulgarian intellectuals have signed a response to Bulgaria’s plan to stall the first intergovernmental conference between North Macedonia and the EU planned for December. Challenging Sofia’s claims that the Macedonian nation was created by the Communist Party of Yugoslavia, they assert that all standardized languages are artificial creations in a sense. This view constitutes a direct attack on Sofia.

In an interview for Deutsche Welle, German historian Ulf Brunnbauer scoffs at Bulgaria’s behavior toward North Macedonia. He says that Bulgaria pushing forward only its own historical narrative is the same as Germany hypothetically compelling the Austrians to identify as Germans, or Denmark telling the Norwegians that they are some sort of anomaly because they used to be a part of the same empire.

Professor Ivaylo Ditchev from the University of Sofia goes along the same lines, suggesting that “Bulgaria is leading a symbolic war because it doesn’t have a serious policy.” As for Sofia’s linguistic demand, he points out that — not only in Bulgaria, but in the entire Balkans — languages are used to further divisions “rather than uniting people.”

Perhaps the most realistic and forthright opinion on the bizarre wrangle has been the one put forward by Florian Bieber, a professor from the University of Graz widely regarded as an expert on the Balkans.

He notes that Bulgaria pressures the state of North Macedonia to give up on its own Bulgarian minority while simultaneously demanding it to counter the pressure exerted on this community. Furthermore, professor Bieber holds that the Bulgarian side seems to bully the North Macedonian side, which threatens to discourage the latter’s efforts to cast off the authoritarian leadership and continue with reforms; hence, the current opposition members would be more than glad to say: “We told you it would be this way.”

Minister Zakharieva’s recent statement that a country that celebrates “one of the biggest dictators” — the late president-for-life of Yugoslavia, [Josip Broz] Tito — cannot join the EU caused quite an uproar. In North Macedonia as well as beyond, Facebook users have been ridiculing the minister’s comment, with Bieber sarcastically drawing attention to the fact that both Slovenia and Croatia have joined the EU in spite of celebrating Tito.

Bickering in Skopje and an unknown number of Bulgarian passports

As the scholarly public in Bulgaria and the rest of Europe lashes out against the bullying of North Macedonia, the opposition in Skopje requests that the Parliament hold a public discussion on the so-called “red lines” in the dispute. However, foreign minister Osmani and the deputy prime minister for European integration, Nikola Dimitrov, are refusing to comply.