Radev: Bulgaria Withstood Pressure over Skopje Negotiations Last Year

Bulgarian President Rumen Radev has said his country was last year exposed to serious pressure regarding a start of membership negotiations for Skopje. However, as he explained on Monday, it withstood it. The caretaker cabinet and Radev, according to the Bulgarian President, explained the reasons and Bulgaria’s positions, which were accepted. “It’s about respecting human rights,” he noted on Monday, adding also that hate speech was incompatible with European principles. In Radev’s view, pressure can be withstood if there are clear positions that take the Bulgarian interest into consideration. However, he stressed that it remained to be seen whether the Government would withstood the pressure. Asked to comment on the statement by North Macedonia’s Foreign Minister, Bujar Osmani, that this was perhaps the only and last chance to save the Skopje-Sofia relations and that the former had done everything that could and couldn’t have been done, Radev just simply said it was highly unexemplary for ultimatums to be set for Bulgaria.