Dimitrov Talks on Bulgaria Issue

“There can be no progress in the talks with Bulgaria and unblocking of Macedonia’s European integration because official Sofia is blackmailing us and violating the Good Neighbor Agreement,” said Deputy Prime Minister for European Affairs Nikola Dimitrov. According to Dimitrov, Bulgaria has violated Article 2 of the Agreement, which stipulates that they would aid on the European path, will not hider, let alone block the path. “The big problem for progress in the talks is the atmosphere of blackmail. Both the Macedonian people and the Bulgarian people have a saying, “there is no beauty in doing things with force”. There can be no real intimacy and no real progress if this atmosphere of blackmail persists. We cannot have closeness and progress when blackmailed. We experienced two vetoes and we experienced the problematization of something that is very internal, the problematization of our language at the European level and in that sense these steps made the honest dialogue difficult. That is the main problem,” Dimitrov said.