Skopje, 9 July 2022 (MIA) - In the report prepared by the Bulgarian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) on the French proposal for unblocking North Macedonia’s EU path, which was released Saturday by Deutsche Welle, it is stated that the 2017 Friendship Treaty and the protocol are not a formal criterion for opening or closing the negotiation chapters. “In this respect, the draft negotiating framework does not correspond to the framework position of 2019, because the implementation of the Friendship Treaty and the protocol under Article 12 do not represent a formal criterion for opening or closing the negotiation chapters. The role of the Council of the EU (i.e. Bulgaria) is not foreseen in the evaluation of whether the Republic of North Macedonia implements the bilateral protocol, and this evaluation is left to the EC,” reads the report. The Bulgarian Ministry of Foreign Affairs is dissatisfied and considers it problematic for them that North Macedonia received a "pure Macedonian language" in the negotiating framework.