Skopje, 11 June 2025 (MIA) - Prime Minister Hristijan Mickoski said Wednesday that, so far, there is no confirmation of a meeting between the Macedonian and Bulgarian delegations on the sidelines of the NATO Summit in The Hague, scheduled for later this month. He added that he will personally contact European Council President António Costa in the coming days to learn whether the other side has responded.

“I have not received confirmation so far, but I plan to speak with European Council President António Costa in the coming days. It was his idea, which we accepted without hesitation, and I want to know whether there has been any response from the other side,” Mickoski said in response to media questions at the Government after the national awards ceremony for outstanding achievements in sports.

Mickoski stated at the end of last month that, during his meeting in Skopje with the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Kaja Kallas, they also discussed, among other things, a possible bilateral meeting with the Bulgarian side, its format, who might attend, and where it could be held.

The upcoming NATO Summit in The Hague, as he stated at the time, is a good opportunity for the meeting. It would be attended by President Gordana Siljanovska-Davkova, President of the European Council António Costa, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Kaja Kallas, and, as Mickoski noted, the composition has been expanded to include the possibility of NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte attending as well.

PM Mickoski today expressed regret about the conduct of what he called our NATO ally, referring to recent remarks by senior Bulgarian officials among them President Rumen Radev and Vice President Iliana Iotova, who accused the Macedonian side of exerting pressure and called for close monitoring of Skopje’s actions and developments in the European Parliament.

“I regret that our NATO ally is behaving this way toward a fellow member of the Alliance, but I leave it to the other allied countries to make their own judgments. Using EU membership or a country’s integration into the EU as a political weapon to resolve bilateral issues dating back centuries is truly an example of clumsy diplomacy. That’s fine, that’s the decision made by Bulgarian diplomacy and politicians, and I can’t tell them how to act. What was important for us over the past year was making sure the world understood that the core of the issue isn’t about adding Bulgarians to the Constitution, we’re talking about over 800 citizens, based on the last census, who identify as part of the Bulgarian community and say their mother tongue is Bulgarian. The core issue is an attempt at engineering a new Macedonian nation, created as a result of a Comintern decision after 1945, with a new Macedonian language that became official in the UN in 1945 as part of the Yugoslav federation, a nation and language, he added, said to be based on Bulgarian roots,” Mickoski said.

He emphasized that anyone who fails to see this as the core of the problem is, as he put it, either politically illiterate or unfit to be involved in politics, adding that former Foreign Minister Bujar Osmani was fully aware of this.

“By accepting the French proposal, he dealt a serious blow to our national identity. We will fight to the end, for as long as we can. I don’t know if we will succeed, but we are gaining support, more and more countries and senior politicians are endorsing what we are doing, and our arguments are being heard,” Mickoski said.

He once again asked why, if the issue was the inclusion of Bulgarians in the Constitution, the constitutional amendments were submitted with a reference to the Macedonian identity as present.

“Why are the rulings of the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg not being respected, and why is OMO Ilinden–Pirin still not recognized? Why is the Macedonian community in Bulgaria not allowed to have its own representative on the Council for Minorities, alongside the Roma, Jews, Turks, Armenians, and others? The whole world is observing closely. If the resolution, which clearly affirms the distinct centuries-old Macedonian identity and language, does not pass in the European Parliament’s Committee on Foreign Affairs (AFET) on June 24, then the issue is not constitutional amendments, but the very existence of the centuries-old Macedonian identity and language,” Mickoski stated.

Photo: Government