Bulgaria’s Angel Dimitrov, who co-heads the joint Commission on History with North Macedonia, believes that the body is sort of an alibi for the, as he notes, currently very complicated relations between the two countries.
Asked how far along the work of the Commission was, he stated “nowhere” because even though eight years had passed and 38 meetings had been held, the discussion was still at the point concerning the textbook for seventh-graders in North Macedonia (for sixth-graders in Bulgaria).
“Look, I could be able to say that this is a blockade of the work of the Commission, but I will use a more careful phrase, referring to it as ‘stagnation’, ‘halt’, with me using it because that is also the overall state of the country there. Something that was referred to in the Report from Brussels and something that doesn’t worry at all state leadership there”, Dimitrov stated.