Skopje, 25 June 2025 (MIA) – Recent remarks by Bulgarian politicians are intended solely for domestic use, which is understandable, Prime Minister Hristijan Mickoski stated Wednesday after the Thomas Waitz’s progress report on Macedonia was adopted yesterday by the European Parliament Committee on Foreign Affairs (AFET).

Asked by reporters whether the report’s adoption was a small victory, he said it is a major disappointment for him.

“Yesterday, we witnessed how in Brussels, the capital of Europe, an attempt was made by certain MEPs to create a new nation and a new language in Europe in the 21st century. The same ones accusing Russia of denying the identity and language of Ukrainians, made an attempt yesterday to do the same to a small Macedonian nation, to create a modern Macedonian nation using a modern Macedonian language. It didn’t pass in the first stage,” Mickoski stated when asked for a comment on Bulgarian President Rumen Radev’s letter to the head of European institutions and the EU member countries and on ex-PM Boyko Borissov’s statement saying “nothing fatal had happened yesterday.”

“Everything we warned about from the beginning was confirmed in a few minutes yesterday,” he said noting he was pleased that the citizens have been able to realize that neither the identity nor the language “had been fortified the way some swindlers in politics had been convincing us in the past three years.”

“Bulgarians in the Constitution is not the problem, the problem is something else – Macedonian identity and Macedonian mother language,” the prime minister told reporters in Skopje.

Mickoski said his country doesn’t require any changes, “only Bulgaria to respect what is a fact and what it had signed i.e., the resolution on the protection of human rights.”

Asked about any expectations from the European Parliament session, due on July 7-11, whose agenda will also include the Waitz report, Mickoski pledged the fight will continue.

“We will continue to fight, but, as I’ve said, I don’t know whether we will succeed with the plenary session, too,” PM Mickoski said.

According to him, if the country had the chance to start negotiations with the EU, they would end in three to four years’ time, but “as Macedonians with Macedonian identity, Macedonian language, not as modern Macedonians, modern Macedonian identity and modern Macedonian language.”

Photo/video: MIA