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© Associated Press
Macedonian President Stevo Pendarovski announced that his counterpart Rumen Radev and Prime Minister Boyko Borissov have blocked an “oral agreement” reached in Berlin this week to start Skopje talks with the EU.
In a 360-degree interview, Pendarovski, without providing any proof, said a compromise had been reached after “the teams spoke a few days ago in Berlin” and “various ideas were offered at the table” and sources arrived. of both delegations. General agreement “.
The Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ekaterina Zaharieva, held a meeting of several hours with her counterpart Buyar Osmani and the Minister of European Affairs, Nikola Dimitrov. He did not speak to reporters on Tuesday; According to her, there is a convergence of positions, but no willingness on the part of Bulgaria to say “yes” after meeting with the mediators of two German ministers.
Different positions
Pendarovski clarified that “there is no exact information”, but “only speculation” and there is still a possibility, although small, of a common decision.
At the same time, there is no evidence that Borissov and Radev are in the same position for dialogue with Zaev. The Bulgarian head of state openly demanded that negotiations with North Macedonia be postponed until a bilateral solution is found.
Borissov is more cautious. He was silent on the issue most of the time, but only gave a deadline of November 10 in October, which has now moved to the General Affairs Council on November 17, for a compromise between Sofia and Skopje. His colleague Zoran Zaev has repeatedly pointed out that he has a breakthrough in the bilateral meeting, which should take place in Sofia next week, and Zaev to come to the Berlin process, which the two countries are hosting. However, he gave a sign that the result also depends on the health status of Borisov, who is still in quarantine for coronavirus.
The “official language” of the candidate country
Yesterday, Mediapool wrote, citing its sources, that Bulgaria has set three conditions for the negotiating framework with North Macedonia, due to whose absence of the EU option it announced yesterday that it could not accept the project.
The thematic range of the three conditions is not surprising and is related to good neighborly relations and their differentiation in Chapter 35 (“Miscellaneous”), as is the case in Serbia, with the use of the constitutional name Republic of North Macedonia (not abbreviated North Macedonia) and the use of “the official language of the candidate country” instead of the term “Macedonian” in the negotiation framework.
The Bulgarian proposal comes at a time when both Sofia and Skopje are pointing out that there is some unity on the issue of language drafting and is linked to the 2017 Neighborhood Agreement, which speaks of “Macedonian language, disputes the constitution of Republic Macedonia (North) “.
“The use of the term ‘Macedonian language’ is unacceptable to us insofar as the creation of this language on the basis of one of the Bulgarian dialects is one of the main tools for converting Bulgarians from Vardar Macedonia to Macedonians “Tsanchev said, according to Mediapool.
